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Author Topic:   MACROevolution vs MICROevolution - what is it?
dwise1
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Posts: 5925
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 236 of 908 (816820)
08-11-2017 3:31 PM
Reply to: Message 229 by Faith
08-11-2017 1:08 PM


Re: the usual silly wrong linear analogy
I know that this is casting pearls before swine, but others reading this may get something out of it even if you refuse to.
It's not either-or, because both processes, selection and accumulation of greater genetic diversity, are happening at the same time. Therefore, we could work out a mathematical function of genetic diversity which incorporates the effects of both selection and the processes that increase genetic diversity such as the accumulation of genetic mutations.
Now refer to your differential calculus in which you examine the rates of change of a function with respect to an independent variable. To illustrate with a simple and intuitive example, you can develop a function of spatial displacement with respect to time, s(t); we would say "s is a function t" or "displacement s is a function of time t". If you differentiate s(t) with respect to t, you get velocity, v(t) = ds / dt. With v(t), you can determine the velocity at any point in time. If you then differentiate v(t), you get acceleration, a(t) = dv / dt.
To put that simplistically (because other factors come into play) into a practical problem, you have a rocket that needs to follow a particular trajectory, the displacement function, s(t), which yields the rocket's location at every point in time. From that trajectory, you can determine what the rocket's velocity has to be at every point in time. From that velocity function, you know how much the rocket will need to be accelerating at every point in time. From that acceleration function, you can determine how much thrust you'll need from the engines. Of course, in real life, differential calculus is often mainly used to solve problems of a more abstractly mathematical nature or to develop mathematical models of observed phenomena. The story is that Newton invented calculus to provide him the language with which to describe what he was observing.
Many functions describing the real world are multi-variant -- ie, instead of having just one independent variable, they have more than one, often several. That changes the problem to needing to determine with variables have more of an effect on the function. For that, we use partial derivatives:
quote:
In mathematics, a partial derivative of a function of several variables is its derivative with respect to one of those variables, with the others held constant (as opposed to the total derivative, in which all variables are allowed to vary).
In short, you successively differentiate the function by each variable, then add up all the partial derivatives to get the total derivative. The benefit of this evolution {NavySpeak} is that each term in that total derivative tells you how much each variable contributes to the total rate of change.
So returning to our mathematical function of genetic diversity which incorporates the effects of both selection and the processes that increase genetic diversity such as the accumulation of genetic mutations, I think we can safely assume that it is a function with multiple variables, which would make it a prime candidate for partial differentiation. In term, I think we can safely assume that the constituent function for selection also has multiple variables and can itself be decomposed into partial derivatives -- those multiple variables would express selection under different conditions, such as during speciation as opposed to during stasis as opposed to normal tracking of a changing environment. The partial derivative for mutation may well prove to be much simpler and nearly constant.
The bottom line is that the none of the processes involved does turn off or on, but rather each process is at work continually. It is not a simplistic either/or situation, but rather one in which one process contribute more or less than the others under certain circumstances and, as those circumstances change ever so slightly, then so do the contributions of each process.
It is a complex interplay which can quickly outstrip the human mind's ability to imagine it. The human ability to imagine how something works is very remarkable, albeit limited. My own ability is fairly strong; coupled with my mechanical aptitude, I frequently observe a system in operation and start to analyze how it works. At a multi-day campout which started with the moon being up and spoiling our star-gazing, I visualized in my mind, coupled with some vary basic calculations based on the moon's roughly 28-day orbit, how the moon would be rising about 45 minutes later each night, and thus determined that we would have a good window of opportunity for star-gazing on the last night before the moon could rise and spoil the party.
But our ability to imagine things is limited -- a fact which you have failed to learn in your own failed geological thought experiments. In one of his most misquoted statements, Darwin described the evolution of complex organs such as the eye as being beyond human imagination, but -- he continues, which creationists always leave out in misquoting him -- if you apply reason then we can work out how the eye could have evolved. What follows varies from one edition of On the Origin of Species to the next, but he works methodically through example after example of visual organs in then-extant species starting with a photo sensitive cell to one connected to a nerve and so on and so. In The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins recreated that exercise, I seem to recall in Chapter 3.
Now, for Darwin's work, "reason", let's substitute "math". When I read Dawkins' description of his WEASEL program in Chapter 3, "Accumulating Small Change", of The Blind Watchmaker, I didn't believe it. So, using his description of it as my specification (he did not provide any source listing and I think it was written in BASIC anyway), I wrote a Pascal program to implement it (since rewritten in C). It worked phenomenally, which still made no sense to me. Even with my maybe-better-than-average ability to imagine a solution in my head, I simply could not understand how Dawkins' WEASEL, now my MONKEY, so named as an homage to Eddington's perennial misquote:
quote:
... If I let my fingers wander idly over the keys of a typewriter it might happen that my screed made an intelligible sentence. If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters they might write all the books in the British Museum. The chance of their doing so is decidedly more favourable than the chance of the molecules returning to one half of the vessel.
(A. S. Eddington. The Nature of the Physical World: The Gifford Lectures, 1927)
The misquote is that creationists (and others) keep misrepresenting it as referring to the probabilities of evolution, whereas in fact he was talking about thermodynamics, as in the probability that the random motion of a gas in a container could ever result in all the molecules having moved to one side of the container -- see Infinite monkey theorem.
Because I simply could not imagine how my own MONKEY program could produce such results, I analyzed it mathematically. It was only then that I could finally understand it. Human imagination had failed me completely, but it was mathematics which showed me the truth of what was happening.
Faith, on this point, your imagination has failed you. It is time to turn to reasoning and then to mathematics. Figures don't lie, although liars can figure.

The ultimate solution with WEASEL and MONKEY lies completely in the probability models used.
My apologies, but I am decades out or practice with the academic definitions. Most probability models are based on "this happening AND this happening AND this happening AND ... ". For example, assuming a fair coin (normally impossible since heads is usually ever so slightly heavier) such that heads would have a probability of 0.5 (50%), what is the probability of tossing 10 heads in a row? That would be the product of the probability of each and every independent event, which in this case would be 0.510, which would be 0.0009765625 or 9.765625×10-4. 100 times in a row would be 0.510, which would be about 7.89×10-31. Practically all creationist probability arguments follow this model.
The problem with creationist probability arguments is that they have nothing whatsoever to do with evolution nor with how it works -- the latter being the far stronger argument.
Let's return to that coin toss sequence. One coin, one thumb, one single series of attempts. Now let's look at how evolution would need to work. One population. Multiple members of that populations, hence multiple parents and multiple sets of progeny. Immediately, we see the typical creationist format providing only one single path, whereas in reality life itself follows multiple parallel paths. So instead of ANDing (Boolean multiplication, BTW) each step, we need to be ORing (Boolean addition, BTW) each step.
I explain all this in my analysis of MONKEY, MONKEY PROBABILITIES (MPROBS) -- I have been informed of an error therein: in calculating the Markovian chain probabilities for each step of a given scenario, I was off by one iteration. When you open the page, search for "de Morgan Theorem". As part of my training as a computer electronics technician, I was taught Boolean algebra, which was later supplemented by a university electrical engineering course in logic design. "De-Morganizing" a circuit or Boolean expression was an every-day skill for us.
Here is the section on Wikipedia about the engineering use of de Morgan's Theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Morgan%27s_laws#Engineering. Basically, to de-Morganize a Boolean expression, you invert all the Boolean variables and replace the ANDs with ORs and the ORs with ANDs.
Here is how I applied that to the probability model. Please note that for every probability, P, of something happening, there is also the probability, Q, of it not happening, such that Q = (1.0 - P) -- BTW, probability values range from 0 (absolute impossibility) to 1.0 (absolute certainty).
Now, here is the bottom line from MPROBS and the ultimate reason why both MONKEY and WEASEL succeed so inevitably. For MONKEY to fail, it would require every single parallel path to fail. When we work out the probabilities of that happening, such complete and utter failure is so small as to be deemed "virtually impossible", which by inversion ( P = (1 - Q) ) , renders the probability of success virtually inevitable.
I could not ever have possibly imagined that outcome! But the mathematics shows it to be virtually inevitable.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 229 by Faith, posted 08-11-2017 1:08 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 237 by Faith, posted 08-11-2017 6:40 PM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5925
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 284 of 908 (817015)
08-14-2017 9:00 PM
Reply to: Message 270 by Faith
08-14-2017 10:24 AM


Re: Evolution has a built-in stopping point
Let's use a different example to state your position:
quote:
Automobiles get their propulsion from their engines, but they are always subject to friction. Friction inevitably slows them down to a halt. Therefore, it is impossible for automobiles to move.
The only way for that model to be true is if you only take friction into account and not the car engine. That is what we keep seeing you do with this argument.
I brought this up because the necessary genetic loss is never acknowledged in discussions of evolution, and the computer simulation models perpetuate the same wrong idea of an unimpeded series of changes from microevolution to macroevolution.
None of which is true. Could you please name some of these computer simulation models that you are referring to?
Apparently even when they take "selection" into account they fail to represent this fact.
Any model describing or simulation evolution which does not take selection into account could not work.
Again, what computer simulation models are you talking about?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 270 by Faith, posted 08-14-2017 10:24 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 293 by Faith, posted 08-15-2017 2:28 AM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5925
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 299 of 908 (817040)
08-15-2017 10:24 AM
Reply to: Message 293 by Faith
08-15-2017 2:28 AM


Re: Evolution has a built-in stopping point
Faith writes:
DWise1 writes:
Faith writes:
I brought this up because the necessary genetic loss is never acknowledged in discussions of evolution, and the computer simulation models perpetuate the same wrong idea of an unimpeded series of changes from microevolution to macroevolution.
None of which is true. Could you please name some of these computer simulation models that you are referring to?
Faith writes:
Apparently even when they take "selection" into account they fail to represent this fact.
Any model describing or simulation evolution which does not take selection into account could not work.
Again, what computer simulation models are you talking about?
Whatever it was that Dawkins came up with some years ago that illustrated how cute little stick creatures move and change continuously from one form to another.
I asked a serious question and your reply is to bullshit us? And you wonder why nobody can take anything you say seriously.
There is a misconception that the amount of change in a phenotype is proportional to the amount of change in the genotype; ie, that a large change in the phenotype requires a large change in the genotype and that a large change in the genotype results in a large change in the phenotype while a small change in the genotype results only in a small change in the phenotype. That is not true, so Dawkins wrote Biomorphs to demonstrate that small changes in the genotype can result in large changes in the phenotype while large changes in the genotype can result in little or no change in the phenotype.
Biomorphs does not simulate evolution! Rather it illustrates development, the use of a genotype to generate a phenotype. Since it does not simulate evolution, it does not need to include selection but rather leaves it to the user to provide artificial selection to select a biomorph to be the parent of the next generation. For that matter, including selection in the program would present problems for the program itself (ie, would require defining an environment and how the phenotype of the organisms would interact with it for selection to work) which in no way whatsoever presents problems for evolution. At the bottom of my MONKEY page I discuss this problem and mention and briefly describe two programs that do implement selection.
Similarly, WEASEL does not even attempt to simulate evolution and explicitly was not intended to. Rather, it demonstrates the difference in performance of two different methods of selection: single-step selection (abysmally poor performance) which creationists falsely claim evolution uses, and cumulative selection (extremely effective) which is based on how selection in evolution works. That is what it was intended to do and that is what it does do. It was never intended to simulate evolution.
Since neither program was ever intended to simulate evolution, naming them to support your claims is completely false. Shouldn't you try to learn something about the things that you want to use to support your claims before you actually use them?
From the bottom of At the bottom of my MONKEY page:
quote:
Working on a project to more fully simulate evolution would be interesting, if I had the time. In such a project we would need to define an environment, phenotypes that would interact with that environment as they try to survive, genotypes that would direct the development of those phenotypes, and rules for the mutation of those genotypes.
The problems in developing such a simulation are considerable. All of these elements would need to be as realistic and as free from interference as possible. The criteria for fitness should not be predetermined arbitrarily but would have to come directly from the environment and the organisms' interaction with that environment. The embryonic development from genotype to phenotype should follow regular rules which could be arbitrary to some extent, but the phenotypes produced should not be predetermined, but rather be the result of the expression of the genotypes -- a software example of this is Dawkins' Biomorphs2. The mutation of the genotypes should be the easiest part of the project, once the genotypes have been defined. Of course, one of the greater problems would be how to evaluate the simulation; if we allow the model to be too abstract then the resultant environment and "organisms" could be so alien to us that we could not make any sense out of it.
The closest that I have seen programs come to simulating selection based on the interaction of an organism with its environment are TBUGS3 and Dr. Ray Thomas' TIERRA4.
In the meantime, I would still like to hear ideas for programs to simulate evolution and, if I should ever have to time to attempt such a project, I would definitely need ideas to work with. Of course, as I tell people who try to model evolution with single-step selection (like Michael Denton), we have to keep in mind just what we are trying to model.



FOOTNOTE 2:

In the second half of the third chapter of The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins describes a kind of computer game they had written to illustrate aspects of embryonic development. From that link:

The program displayed a two dimensional shape (a "biomorph") made up of straight black lines, the length, position, and angle of which were defined by a simple set of rules and instructions (analogous to a genome). Adding new lines (or removing them) based on these rules offered a discrete set of possible new shapes (mutations), which were displayed on screen so that the user could choose between them. The chosen mutation would then be the basis for another generation of biomorph mutants to be chosen from, and so on. Thus, the user, by selection, could steer the evolution of biomorphs. This process often produced images which were reminiscent of real organisms for instance beetles, bats, or trees. Dawkins speculated that the unnatural selection role played by the user in this program could be replaced by a more natural agent if, for example, colourful biomorphs could be selected by butterflies or other insects, via a touch sensitive display set up in a garden.

The book's appendix included an order form for that program. However, at the time it only existed for the Mac, which I have never owned, so I wrote my own version in Turbo Pascal to run in CGA graphics mode on MS-DOS. The program has since been ported to Windows and there exist open source versions.





FOOTNOTE 3:

Actually, only I call it TBUGS, since I had written it in Turbo Pascal (hence the "T" in TBUGS). It was based on an article I read in Scientific American, which is described in Dewdney's BugWorld, a software project page:

In 1989, A.K. Dewdney wrote an article in Scientific American entitled "Simulated evolution: wherein bugs learn to hunt bacteria" as a part of the "Computer Recreations" column (May, pp. 138--141). The ideas in that article were included in his book Turing Omnibus (1989).
The idea described in these works is a very simple artificial life experiment. A tauroidal landscape houses moving agents (which we will call "bugs") and immobile food elements ("bacteria") for the agents. The bugs are incapable of sensing their environment, but they do make a kind of "choice" regarding the direction they move. This choice is made by a simple distribution across six different discrete turning choices, defined by a set of genes. Bugs gain energy when they eat bacteria and burn energy when they move; however, a bug that runs out of energy will die (be removed from the simulation), and a bug that has sufficient energy and age will divide into two nearly identical copies. At the start, the bugs "jitter" around, turning randomly; however, they will often eventually evolve to glide around the world, scooping up bacteria in their path.

That page includes a ZIP file containing the source code for a MASON applet -- again with the Macs! Googling on the article title, there's a page to buy a PDF of the article from Scientific American. There are also several programs based on the article, such as BugSim.
Basically, you can set up the environment with different rules for how the food elements grow; eg, food grows fast, food grows slow, food only grows in one area, etc. When the bugs reproduce by fission (one bug having eaten enough becomes two), the new bug's genes can be mutated. Since the genes control how they move, the new bug could develop new movement behavior. Then how the food grows determines which movement behavior works the best and soon all the bugs have that behavior since the ones that didn't had starved and died off. If food grows uniformly, then you'll have "cruisers" that just move in a straight line to where there's more food (their "world" has wrap-around, so when a bug leaves one side of the screen it reappears on the opposite side).
If food only grows in one area, then you get "twirlers" who move in tight circles in order to stay where the food is. I seem to recall (it has been nearly three decades, after all) that how fast the food grows also affects how fast the bugs move. And so on.





FOOTNOTE 4:

Dr. Thomas Ray's TIERRA was rather interesting -- go to that Wikipedia article for more information and for the link to the
TIERRA Home Page. Its organisms are virtual computers which fed on computer resources (ie, memory, processing time). Each consisted of a short program which enables it to use resources and to reproduce. Two interesting results of the experients were:

  1. The co-evolution of parasites and hosts

  2. Parasites are entities that have lost the ability to reproduce on their own, so somewhat like a viruses (viri) they infect healthy entities in order to use their hosts' resources in order to reproduce. In response to the parasites, some hosts evolved code to resist a parasite attack and some hosts even evolved strategies to exploit the parasites, thus becoming a kind of hyper-parasite.
  3. Evolving programs deemed by humans to be impossible

  4. The humans developing TIERRA worked out the original code for the entities to reproduce. In the process, they determined the minimum size that a program could be and still enable reproduction; an entity with a smaller program simply could not reproduced and would eventually die an evolutionary dead end. But then some entities developed program techniques that the humans had never dreamed of, had thought to be impossible. With these novel techniques, entities with programs maybe half the size of the "smallest possible working program" were able to reproduce and also, as I recall, make more efficient use of resources. When you read the documentation, look for "unrolling the loop."


Remember that those properties evolved on their own and were not planned by the human experimenters in any fashion.



This message is a reply to:
 Message 293 by Faith, posted 08-15-2017 2:28 AM Faith has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5925
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 300 of 908 (817041)
08-15-2017 10:28 AM
Reply to: Message 293 by Faith
08-15-2017 2:28 AM


Re: Evolution has a built-in stopping point
Faith, you again tried to avoid the main question. From Message 284:
DWise1 writes:
Let's use a different example to state your position:
quote:
Automobiles get their propulsion from their engines, but they are always subject to friction. Friction inevitably slows them down to a halt. Therefore, it is impossible for automobiles to move.
The only way for that model to be true is if you only take friction into account and not the car engine. That is what we keep seeing you do with this argument.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 293 by Faith, posted 08-15-2017 2:28 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 301 by Faith, posted 08-15-2017 10:30 AM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5925
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 317 of 908 (817061)
08-15-2017 11:20 AM
Reply to: Message 301 by Faith
08-15-2017 10:30 AM


Re: Evolution has a built-in stopping point
I think it's a false analogy.
That's right! And so is yours for the same reason.
It's not just the engine accelerating the car and it's not just friction decelerating it, but rather it's the net effect of both forces considered together. It's not just the accumulation of genetic diversity and it's not just the loss of some of that genetic diversity through selection, but rather it's the net effect of both forces considered together.
If you only consider the one factor while ignoring the other, as you are doing, then you arrive at incorrect conclusions, often at ridiculously incorrect conclusions.
BTW, in your model, how are neutral mutations lost through selection? How does selection eliminate them, given that selection does not act upon them, what with them being neutral and all that?
And keep in mind that today's neutral mutation can be tomorrow's beneficial trait when the environment changes.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 301 by Faith, posted 08-15-2017 10:30 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 322 by Faith, posted 08-15-2017 11:40 AM dwise1 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5925
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 320 of 908 (817065)
08-15-2017 11:26 AM
Reply to: Message 306 by Faith
08-15-2017 10:56 AM


Re: Evolution has a built-in stopping point
The point is that adding mutations is like adding fuel to an engine. Unless the fuel is used up the engine isn't running, you aren't getting evolution.
I have been driving since 1967, so then for half a century. You are claiming that I should have run out of gas long ago, yet I still have never run out of gas. Never, not even once.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 306 by Faith, posted 08-15-2017 10:56 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 323 by Faith, posted 08-15-2017 11:56 AM dwise1 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5925
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 369 of 908 (817155)
08-15-2017 3:29 PM
Reply to: Message 237 by Faith
08-11-2017 6:40 PM


Re: the usual silly wrong linear analogy
Really? You completely ignore what I was telling you in Message 236 and tried to change the subject to be about WEASEL?
It's very cute and it's fun to watch it do its thing, but it doesn't take into account the FACT that to get a new variety or species requires the loss of genetic material for other phenotypes.
It wasn't meant to! Your "criticism" of it is like calling all smart phones worthless because they can't heat a frozen pizza.
I was pointing out to you that there are many things that we cannot imagine (ie, work out in our heads how they work), so we have to resort to more rigorous methods. Your silly genetic depletion claim is just such a problem. You need to write it down in detail and work out those details in order for you to see whether it actually works or not.
As I said from the beginning, I was yet again casting pearls before swine. My minister warned me about that.
The only reason I mentioned my MONKEY was to point you to my analysis of its probabilities, MPROBS. As I wrote in Message 236:
DWise1 writes:
Because I simply could not imagine how my own MONKEY program could produce such results, I analyzed it mathematically. It was only then that I could finally understand it. Human imagination had failed me completely, but it was mathematics which showed me the truth of what was happening.
Faith, on this point, your imagination has failed you. It is time to turn to reasoning and then to mathematics. Figures don't lie, although liars can figure.
In MPROBS, I determined the probability of producing a given string, the alphabet in alphabetical order, with randomly selected characters. When I did it using single-step selection (what creationists false ascribe to evolution), the probability of success is 1.6244×10-37, so improbable that it would take a supercomputer making 1,000,000 attempts per second about 195 trillion years to earn a one-in-a-million chance -- nearly 10,000 times longer than the universe's estimated age of 20 billion years. Using cumulative selection (modeled after what evolution actually uses), my old XT clone succeeded in about half a minute, consistently, repeatedly, without fail. On a modern PC, it succeeds so rapidly as to appear instantaneous.
In MPROBS, I calculate the probability of success for each step (choosing one position at random and replacing it with a randomly selected character). This is where it really got counter-intuitive, because for each step the probability of success is low. And the closer you got to the solution the worse the odds became.
My mind could not imagine how MONKEY could ever possibly succeed, yet it does, rapidly, without fail.
To illustrate that, I just wrote a short C program to calculate and display some of those probabilities. In this run, I simply differentiated between succeeding by advancing (ie, "making the next step") and failing to advance (ie, either sliding back or no change). Here is the printout (remember that k is the number of characters in the current string that are correct):
quote:

P(succeed) P(fail)
k = 0: 0.038462 0.961538
k = 10: 0.023669 0.976331
k = 20: 0.008876 0.991124
k = 25: 0.001479 0.998521

And yet MONKEY and WEASEL both succeed each and every time, without fail. It is impossible to imagine how, which is the point I was making. In order to solve that problem, you need to dig deep and analyze what you find, something that you cannot do simply by using your imagination.
The solution turns out to be that since you have multiple copies of that string that you're making a random change to, then for that step to fail all of the attempts need to fail. Furthermore, for the entire experiment to fail, then virtually all of the steps need to fail. It turns out that the probably of that happening becomes vanishingly small and hence the probability of the experiment succeeding becomes virtually inevitable.
Basically, the probability of any given step failing to advance is P(fail)size of the population. If you are working with population of 10 strings and k=0, then the probability of all 10 attempts failing is (0.961538)10 = 0.6756. Not as certain to fail, is it? With 100 strings it becomes 0.0198 and the probability of success becomes 0.98, very likely. Even with k=25, with 100 strings the probability of failure becomes 0.86 and hence success becomes 0.14, about one chance in 7.
Now, for a population of 100 strings, what is the probability of consistent failure for 100 iterations? For k=0 where P(fail) = 0.0198, that would be 0.0198100 = 4.64×10-171, virtually impossible, which makes success virtually inevitable. Choose the probability of failure for a population of 100 strings and k=25, 0.86, we find that 0.86100 = 2.817×10-7, which is 1 chance in 3.55 million, rather low; success in that case would be 0.9999997, which is quite high.
 
 
Faith, you need to do the same thing with your claim. Of course, the difference is that when I undertook that exercise I was trying to disprove MONKEY -- indeed, I wrote MONKEY in order to disprove WEASEL. In your case you will not be able to maintain such honesty, but you must at least try.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 237 by Faith, posted 08-11-2017 6:40 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 371 by Faith, posted 08-15-2017 3:34 PM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5925
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 372 of 908 (817159)
08-15-2017 3:34 PM
Reply to: Message 367 by Faith
08-15-2017 3:05 PM


Re: Evolution has a built-in stopping point
Selection can change a species, but as a matter of fact there are an awful lot of species that simply persist without change.
Yes, that's called stasis, which is also a product of selection.
If a species is well-enough adapted to its environment, then selection will keep it there, weeding out the ones whose differences make them too ill-adapted, or at least not as well-adapted. The result is stasis, just as we would expect.
If the species is not well-enough adapted to its environment, then selection will favor those that are better adapted and the species will change. Actually, in the case of stasis, selection is doing the same thing, favoring those that are better adapted to the environment.
So what's your point?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 367 by Faith, posted 08-15-2017 3:05 PM Faith has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5925
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 373 of 908 (817160)
08-15-2017 3:38 PM
Reply to: Message 371 by Faith
08-15-2017 3:34 PM


Re: the usual silly wrong linear analogy
If I can't follow what you are saying I have no choice but to ignore it. If you want to talk to me make it intelligible to me and stop with the insults if you want to be heard. I stopped reading your post about a third of the way down because it makes no sense to me. Sorry.
Then that is evidence that your mind is not powerful enough to have worked out how evolution must work all inside your noggin. For that matter, nobody's mind is that powerful.
Which is why you need to take a more structured and rigorous approach than just making bald assertions and ignoring the multitude of problems with your claim.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 371 by Faith, posted 08-15-2017 3:34 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 374 by Faith, posted 08-15-2017 3:40 PM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5925
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 375 of 908 (817162)
08-15-2017 3:49 PM
Reply to: Message 374 by Faith
08-15-2017 3:40 PM


Re: the usual silly wrong linear analogy
By repeating all the same bogus bald assertions along with new rationalizations and denials.
Those problems with your claim are quite real and do need to be addressed. All you end up doing is to discredit yourself and your position. And your religion, the reason you make your bogus claims.

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 Message 374 by Faith, posted 08-15-2017 3:40 PM Faith has not replied

  
dwise1
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Posts: 5925
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


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Message 388 of 908 (817238)
08-16-2017 1:05 AM
Reply to: Message 339 by Faith
08-15-2017 1:23 PM


Re: Evolution has a built-in stopping point
The logic of the argument has been clear all along.
Logic! Oh how that poor word has been misused for all these years!
But thanks to CDR Spock, when I started college in 1969 one of the first classes I attended was in logic. Formal logic.
The primary problem with logic is that it is completely dependent on structure, not on truth. Is your argument valid? That is all that logic can determine. Whether your argument is valid.
If your argument is valid, then if you plug true premises into it, you should get true conclusions. If your argument is not valid, then you have not idea what you are getting.
So then, Faith, your problem here is two-pronged: 1) is your logic valid?, and 2) are your premises valid?
At the very least, your premises are highly suspect.

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 Message 339 by Faith, posted 08-15-2017 1:23 PM Faith has not replied

  
dwise1
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Posts: 5925
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


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Message 389 of 908 (817240)
08-16-2017 1:13 AM
Reply to: Message 387 by Faith
08-16-2017 12:55 AM


Re: Evolution has a built-in stopping point
Seriously?
There's a common second year algebra problem in which you have a water tank with an input that is pouring water in at a given rate and a drain which is draining off that water at a given rate and after a given amount of time you are to determine how much water is in that tank.
You are asking us to ignore the water that is pouring into the tank.
The gasoline analogy does indeed work. It just does not support your contrary-to-reality fantasy.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 387 by Faith, posted 08-16-2017 12:55 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 391 by Faith, posted 08-16-2017 1:32 AM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
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Posts: 5925
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 390 of 908 (817244)
08-16-2017 1:23 AM
Reply to: Message 385 by Faith
08-16-2017 12:33 AM


Re: Evolution has a built-in stopping point
No, Faith, what you choose to imagine within your own highly limited noggin will not suffice. I mean, you cannot even handle reading an actual study of simple probabilities, so how much can we trust your ability to completely overturn all of evolutionary science that all knowledgeable scientists have already worked out with great care, all worked out within your own noggin which has already been demonstrated to be too limited to handle any and all discussion of even the simplest of probability calculations.
The logic is far from clear. The need for actual calculations is paramount. Please provide those actual calculations.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 385 by Faith, posted 08-16-2017 12:33 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5925
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


(2)
Message 406 of 908 (817269)
08-16-2017 10:18 AM
Reply to: Message 391 by Faith
08-16-2017 1:32 AM


Re: Evolution has a built-in stopping point
A big part of the problem here seems to be that this is the first time you've ever encountered my argument.
Wrong. You've been posting this half-baked idea of yours for quite some time now. And during all that time you've been ignoring all attempts to help you to correct its problems.
However, I don't know what your evolution simulating program does or how same or different it is from Dawkins.'
I do not have any evolution simulating program! I have told you that repeatedly! Neither WEASEL nor MONKEY simulate evolution! Try to get that through your thick skull!
When I joined this conversation I commented on having seen Dawkins' program demonstrated some time ago and it was clear that it represented the usual idea of unimpeded microevolution becoming macroevolution without any recognition of the necessary loss of genetic diversity.
False! It does no such thing nor was it ever intended to! You are projecting your own half-baked ideas onto it.
And so far nothing you've said shows that your program takes it into account either.
And so far nothing you have said shows that the Bible takes into account the UNIX operating system, therefore the Bible must be false.
Criticizing something for not accomplishing something that it was never intended to accomplish is foolish. Please stop being so foolish!
No, that is a false analogy. losing genetic diversity in the emergence of a population with new phenotypic characteristics is not just a matter of addition plus subtraction.; The loss is NECESSARY to the formation of the new population, it can't happen unless there is such a loss, and that's why continued selection would eventually have to arrive at a point where further evolution couldn't occur. It's not a matter of add and subtract.
Yet again, it is indeed a matter of add and subtract. Just because selection is happening does not mean that mutation stops happening. Failing to recognize that is the major problem with your silly half-baked argument.
Besides, selection does not turn on and off either. Selection happens (we should make that into a bumper sticker). Selection happens all the time in every single
generation just as mutation happens in every single generation. Selection drives stasis -- without selection, stasis could not happen -- and selection drives changes to a new or changing environment.
Faith, your half-baked argument informs us that you misunderstand even the most basic parts of how evolution works. You need to think your ideas through and correct those errors. And that you refuse so vehemently to do so tells us a llot about you and your argument.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 391 by Faith, posted 08-16-2017 1:32 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 413 by Faith, posted 08-16-2017 11:08 AM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5925
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 416 of 908 (817288)
08-16-2017 12:12 PM
Reply to: Message 413 by Faith
08-16-2017 11:08 AM


Re: Evolution has a built-in stopping point
If it wasn't intended to be a model and if yours isn't, shouldn't you at least say what it IS intended to do?
I have! It's not my fault that you choose to ignore it.
Biomorphs:
Message 299
DWise1 writes:
There is a misconception that the amount of change in a phenotype is proportional to the amount of change in the genotype; ie, that a large change in the phenotype requires a large change in the genotype and that a large change in the genotype results in a large change in the phenotype while a small change in the genotype results only in a small change in the phenotype. That is not true, so Dawkins wrote Biomorphs to demonstrate that small changes in the genotype can result in large changes in the phenotype while large changes in the genotype can result in little or no change in the phenotype.
Biomorphs does not simulate evolution! Rather it illustrates development, the use of a genotype to generate a phenotype. Since it does not simulate evolution, it does not need to include selection but rather leaves it to the user to provide artificial selection to select a biomorph to be the parent of the next generation. For that matter, including selection in the program would present problems for the program itself (ie, would require defining an environment and how the phenotype of the organisms would interact with it for selection to work) which in no way whatsoever presents problems for evolution. At the bottom of my MONKEY page I discuss this problem and mention and briefly describe two programs that do implement selection.
. . .
From the bottom of At the bottom of my MONKEY page:
quote:
Working on a project to more fully simulate evolution would be interesting, if I had the time. In such a project we would need to define an environment, phenotypes that would interact with that environment as they try to survive, genotypes that would direct the development of those phenotypes, and rules for the mutation of those genotypes.
The problems in developing such a simulation are considerable. All of these elements would need to be as realistic and as free from interference as possible. The criteria for fitness should not be predetermined arbitrarily but would have to come directly from the environment and the organisms' interaction with that environment. The embryonic development from genotype to phenotype should follow regular rules which could be arbitrary to some extent, but the phenotypes produced should not be predetermined, but rather be the result of the expression of the genotypes -- a software example of this is Dawkins' Biomorphs2. The mutation of the genotypes should be the easiest part of the project, once the genotypes have been defined. Of course, one of the greater problems would be how to evaluate the simulation; if we allow the model to be too abstract then the resultant environment and "organisms" could be so alien to us that we could not make any sense out of it.
. . .



FOOTNOTE 2:

In the second half of the third chapter of The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins describes a kind of computer game they had written to illustrate aspects of embryonic development. From that link:

The program displayed a two dimensional shape (a "biomorph") made up of straight black lines, the length, position, and angle of which were defined by a simple set of rules and instructions (analogous to a genome). Adding new lines (or removing them) based on these rules offered a discrete set of possible new shapes (mutations), which were displayed on screen so that the user could choose between them. The chosen mutation would then be the basis for another generation of biomorph mutants to be chosen from, and so on. Thus, the user, by selection, could steer the evolution of biomorphs. This process often produced images which were reminiscent of real organisms for instance beetles, bats, or trees. Dawkins speculated that the unnatural selection role played by the user in this program could be replaced by a more natural agent if, for example, colourful biomorphs could be selected by butterflies or other insects, via a touch sensitive display set up in a garden.

The book's appendix included an order form for that program. However, at the time it only existed for the Mac, which I have never owned, so I wrote my own version in Turbo Pascal to run in CGA graphics mode on MS-DOS. The program has since been ported to Windows and there exist open source versions.





WEASEL and MONKEY:
Message 299
Similarly, WEASEL does not even attempt to simulate evolution and explicitly was not intended to. Rather, it demonstrates the difference in performance of two different methods of selection: single-step selection (abysmally poor performance) which creationists falsely claim evolution uses, and cumulative selection (extremely effective) which is based on how selection in evolution works. That is what it was intended to do and that is what it does do. It was never intended to simulate evolution.
Since neither program was ever intended to simulate evolution, naming them to support your claims is completely false. Shouldn't you try to learn something about the things that you want to use to support your claims before you actually use them?
Message 406
DWise1 writes:
Faith writes:
However, I don't know what your evolution simulating program does or how same or different it is from Dawkins.'
I do not have any evolution simulating program! I have told you that repeatedly! Neither WEASEL nor MONKEY simulate evolution! Try to get that through your thick skull!
Of course, you will yet again ignore what I've been telling you and continue to make your false statements.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 413 by Faith, posted 08-16-2017 11:08 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 451 by Faith, posted 08-16-2017 10:12 PM dwise1 has not replied

  
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