Evolution and Increased Diversity

Hey Elmer,There are two replies to your post. This one about the dice-stuff and the other one about the non-dice-stuff. I think the other one is more important so skip to that one if you are time constrained. Not necessarily. Each number on a die represents a genotype. Each die is an individual in the population, where the population is all the dice. Biodiversity is the number of different genotypes, or the amount of different numbers (1-6) on the dice. But that is not how the analogy has been defined. Sure, your strawman analogy has been thoroughly refuted.Now, lets move on to my analogy. That’s correct. But in my analogy, before all the dice become number 1’s, I change the “rules”, which corresponds to the environment changing. Therefore, before the biodiversity reaches a value of zero (when all the dice are 1’s), and after the environment changes, we can actually have an increase in biodiversity as we will have both 1’s and 2’s (per the new rule), as well as the other non-6 numbers that have not been re-rolled yet. You don’t need the dice to change to represent a change in biodiversity. The numbers on the dice are the genotypes, so if the number of genotypes changes (for example if it went from eighty 1s, and twenty 3’s to eighty 1’s, ten 2’s and ten 3’s, then the biodiversity has increased from two genotypes to three), then we have had an increase in biodiversity.One of the problems is that you will actually need to throw extra die in on each re-roll so that the population doesn’t dwindle and the analogy does a better job representing reality. The original analogy does need to be changed as exposed by MartinV. Yeah, that’s pretty much what I want. And I would expect that an analogy would require that something has been analogized , I mean, duh. Yes, after a few generations, the biodiversity will decrease per the “rules” of the game. It is after the rules change (ie a change in the environment), that we will see an increase in biodiversity. [this is not to say that and increase in biodiversity requires a change in the environment, that is just the case for this analogy]. Yeah, that was an error (pointed out by MartinV). We will need to add dice back into the poor for the analogy to work more properly. Sorta replenish the pool, if you will. Right, until the rules change and we start keeping both 1’s and 2’s. Then we can have an increase in biodiversity. It helps that we are replacing the removed dice now, so that if the popualtion becomes all 1’s, we can still have the increase. The original idea, was that the rules would be changed before all the dice became 1’s. I don’t think it matters how many variables we began with. Here’s why. After a few re-rolls (generations), we will have mostly 1’s with a few stragglers of the other numbers and no 6’s. Lets say we did not roll any 2’s the last time, so what we have is biodiversity value of four. Four numbers are present, 1,3, 4, and 5. If we change the rules to now keep the 6’s, or the 2’s or whatever and then we re-roll. We could then have five numbers present, which would be an increase in biodiversity. Yeah, I’ve corrected for that, it was an error on my part. “My bad.” But you know, now that I’ve typed all this out, I remember why I don’t like analogies that much. More time is spent explaining the analogy than making the actual point of the analogy.This analogy isn’t working out all that great, we can just drop it if you want. Or if you want to explore it further, I can do that too.As far as the rest of your message, I’ll reply to that in the following post.

Hey alright! A contention! And it is the entire point of the thread. Hot damn!I believe that natural selection, acting on random mutations, can lead to an increase in biodiversity. I don’t have a problem with adjusting/fixing scientific theories, as errors are found, do you?I agree that NS cannot account for it alone. You need the source of the change in the genome in order to get the diversity. RM fits the bill. My position has been the same the whole time. RM provides for the source of the new information needed to allow for a change in the bioforms (what I was calling the “opportunity”), and NS is needed to ”decide’ which changes will be kept and which will be rejected. Neither one of them alone accounts for the increase in biodiversity, they have to work together to get it (except for the rare case of genetic drift, but I doubt that would lead to speciation so we can just forget about it). No, if a trait is advantageous it will become more prominent. It has been selected ”for’. Also, NS can remove all traits that are not the one selected for. Oh wait, is that what you mean? That you can only select ”for’ by removing the ”others’? Here is a link the wiki article on NS. Okay, now I see the angle you are coming from. Okay, okay. I think I see the problem.RM is the “source” of the information that NS selects against. It provides the “opportunity” for an increase in biodiversity. NS is the factor that “decides” which traits are promoted (through the elimination of all others). Neither one of them alone can account for the increase. It is when they are combined that we can see an increase in biodiversity.So basically the question boils down to: How can biodiversity increase when the selective factor can only removing unacceptable traits?You seen to agree that RM can provide the new info to select from, but your contention seems to lie with the idea that by removing traits we can have an increase in them?Let me ask you if that correctly reflects your position before we move forward and I respond to it, okay?

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Holy shit! I guess I’m wasting my time then, huh? For some reason, I doubt it Don’t worry about insulting me, this is the internet. And I’m more than willing to admit that the ToE’s NS is erroneous and cannot account for the increase in biodiversity, but you have not convinced me as such, yet. Isn’t it possible that we (me and my fellow “darwinians” [BTW, what is a ”darwinian’?]) are saying the same thing (that we mean the same thing) but I am just using the terms differently? But that is not what I mean by the environment “causing” it. The cause of the increase in biodiversity is in the selecting of the different mutations. The mutations, themselves, however, are what cause the change in the properties of what is being selected from.You’ve conflated uses of the word “cause”. RM ”causes’ the change in the individual, NS ”causes’ the change in the population. But you can’t change the population with changes in the individuals. So now you’re saying that I’m saying that what changes the population is what changes the individual, but that is not what I am saying. RM is the ”source’ of the information that NS can select from, by the removal of unwanted traits, to provide an increase in biodiversity.How that is possible is what I intend to explain to you. However, I have little time left right now.That is the explanation you’re looking for, right?We will cover that in my next post. Yes, please do.

“Subtraction equals addition” (although worded poorly) when your influx is greater than your retractions. Where ”influx’ is the alleles provided by RM and a ”retraction’ is selecting against an allele via NS. I guess I can see how you might think that, but I am not confusing those things. Okay smartass I wanted to make sure you weren’t in the “RM cannot add info” crowd. You have to have more alleles being introduced to the population, by RM, than there are being removed from the population, by NS. I would call that Genetic Drift. It is possible for it to lead to an increase in biodiversity but improbable. An allele is advantageous when it affects the phenotype in a way that increases the chance of the allele to be present in future generations in higher quantities. The selection is positive when it is not selected against. What would you call a number that is non-zero and non-negative? I see what you mean that NS isn’t really “adding” anything to the biosphere, but if it is non-zero and non-negative, then calling it positive seems fine to me. Unless, you want to turn this into a semantics argument? (I don’t.)You get a constant influx of mutations to the population from RM. In a simplified model, NS just puts pressure on some of those mutations so that it is harder for them to reproduce. However, NS can also promote the reproduction of that mutation, if the mutation provides a benefit to reproducing.Now, we can imagine mutations coming in from all over the place, in a way that each individual is more like a new bioform that it is a member of the parent bioform. In this case, every bioform that did not get selected against, or had a benefit that made reproduction easier, would be an increase in the biodiversity. In this case we would see biodiversity increase readily and quickly.This, however, is not how it works in the real world. What we do have is a relatively small amount of mutations and those mutation are such that the new bioform is hardly distinguishable from the parent, if at all. It works out in a way that one allele might have an 89.67% chance of being passed on, and another has a 90% chance. This slight difference in that chance, when compounded over many generations leads to significant changes in the bioform. As long as there are significant changes in the bioform, speciation events are possible, and biodiversity can increase.It is NS that provided that extra third of a percent chance of the allele being passed on. That is the positive selection that can “cause” the increase in biodiversity.But on the semantic side, it doesn’t really “cause” it because the new information has been provided by RM, not NS. So, we can say that RM causes it, but without the selective pressure, the chances of being passed on would be random, and it would boil down to the “its just so” case you’ve mentioned. It would be totally stochastic. But that is not what we observe. Yes, NS is not the ”source’. But it can and does provide non-zero, non-negative pressure on bioforms so that their genotype has an actual better chance of reproduction, which causes the variation within the population, which is what can lead to a speciation event and thus an increase in biodiversity. But from RM, we have a constant addition of new “lives”. To not remove a new life means that bringing new life into the world is the default. What about it, specifically, makes it inane?The causal power is awarded because NS can have an effect that makes the allele more beneficial, that the allele has a higher probability of succeeding. RM alone doesn’t provide this benefit. It takes that environment to put the pressure on all the others, or remove pressure from the one in order for the diversity to increase. The increase in individuals with the allele are technically in the same bioform, but as more and more mutations stack up, the individuals become more and more distinct from that bioform and when a speciation event occurs, the biodiversity increases. But speciation does not work like: bison --> horse.
It’d be more like: bison --> bisoe --> bosoe --> bosse --> hosse --> horse.
Where the bisoe split from the bison, while the bison remained. The bisoe and bison, are not easily recognized as different bioforms, just like the bosoe and the bisoe aren’t, it is only after much change that we can recognize that a horse is no longer in the same bioform as a bison. That seems about right. And that’s where the conflation of the word “cause” comes into play. Can we say that either one of them really causes biodiversity, can’t we say that they both cause it? It depends on how we use the word “cause”. What do you propose is the “fix” to the ToE that I would have a problem with?Just for shits and giggle, what if I concede that NS cannot do it, then what do you propose IS the “cause” of the increase in biodiversity that we observe?