Just as an FYI if you didn’t know already, you can cut-n-paste a quote from the main thread into a response here to make sure the reference is clear. It’s a lot cleaner than the moderators moving posts over here.
So there we have it, I can not have ten consecutive ancestors according to Gpuccio.
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That’s not as damning to @gpuccio’s claim as the fact that hundreds of different antibodies perform the same function (binding the same antigen) in one person, and hundreds of different ones in another.
@gpuccio’s estimate of target space has no basis in reality.
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We would also have to ask if any observation of evolving function in sequences would be evidence against design, or if these observations would be considered ongoing design. Behe famously stated that if we observed something like the bacterial flagellum evolving in the lab this would disprove design, but he also seemed to walk this back in more recent times. On the face of it, it would seem rather strange that design would suddenly stop, unless there is a theological reason to make this argument.
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if we are talking about sequence space i think that its not true when we are dealing with convergent evolution. at this case we can know what is the chance to get the same function again, since we have evidence for it.
I think you point is powerful especially we see a highly similar sequence re appearing through convergence.
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Posting this comment from UD (link at 69)
Comment 467
(UprightBiPed)
“Note to the “experts” at PS:
You are equivocating on the vast (and very well-documented) difference between what physicists refer to as “physical” or “structural” information, and the semantic information contained in the gene system (the source of specification and control over protein synthesis).
Joshua Swamidass, biological information is semantic and rate-independent, requiring a coordinated set of non-integrable constraints, to be actualized in a non-reversible process. The process itself requires complimentary descriptions in order to be understood. Structural or physical “information”, on the other hand, is purely dynamic and reversible. Clearly, you should know these things, and should not present yourself as an expert on the subject while casually equivocating between these diametrically-opposed meanings. A protein is the product of an encoded description; the position of the stars in the night sky are not. Neither are the locations of islands on the open sea. Neither are weather patterns and tornadoes.”
Forgive the naive question, but how does one measure the increase in FI in a situation where a sequence of junk DNA undergoes neo-functionalization? Would it be treated as if the entire sequence had just popped into existence whole cloth as a new functional element?
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The problem is the inclusion of the latter under the category “semantic” information is the point in question. The large majority of experts who do not accept the creationist argument also do not accept the creationist claim that the physical and chemical interactions of the molecules involved in biological processes are directly analogous to sort of semantic information involved in, say, a written novel or a computer program.
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Yes, I guess that "the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 » is not null. But we would rather not consider this type hypothesis if we are to remain in the domain of science!
There are only 3 causes that can explain an object, i.e., chance, necessity or design. If you can rule out chance or necessity or a combination of both, then design is the explanation and you don’t need to compute the probability of design to draw a design inference. According to ID theory, objects exhibiting high level of FI can’t be produced by chance or by necessity or a combination of both. Therefore, they are designed. This is ID in a nutshell.
As far as biological objects are concerned, I think this is indeed the only real issue here. ID theorists think that as a rule of thumb, most fonctional protein are very rare in the sequence space. If true, ID wins. If wrong, ID may be in trouble. My take is that most functional proteins are very rare in the sequence space. But I will let @gpuccio elaborate on this point if he want.
You are committing here the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
Why are you using labeling as an argument technique?This is what we hear from politicians. You are asserting that both arguments are wrong why do you think so?
Evolution does not fall under either category. So if this is really the foundation of ID, then ID is a 20 year endeavour whose abject failure is explained by the fact that it is founded on a fallacy.
So do most (actually all) evolutionary theorists. So this it not a point on which ID creationism can be supported.
That is exactly the point.
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I lost this train of though - Bill asked something about sequences from biological systems (I think), and I was trying to say that cells and Turing machines are performing equivalent computing functions, and cell are Turing Complete (capable of performing computation).
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Well for starters, I can use the same argument to prove that it’s impossible (…beyond probabilistic resources…) to flip a coin 500 times. There might be just a wee flaw with that methodology.
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Examples? The only cases of molecular convergence I am aware of occur in proteins that are shared through common ancestry, such as in the case of the prestin gene in certain mammalian clades. It isn’t surprising that evolution would find the same mutations in very similar proteins in separate clades. Again, this is a case of finding function with a common starting point. This can’t tell us how many starting points there are to begin with.
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Biological reproduction is not analogous to a tornado in a junkyard.
Which of those would you use to describe the observed process of descent with modification? We can directly observe new organisms being born, and they carry new mutations.
What I would be interested in is an ID supporter finding mutations that separate humans and chimps (or any ape, for that matter) and determining which of those mutations evolution could not produce, and why. I have yet to see any ID supporter do this.
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I can explain the graph but I am more interested if anyone of the ID skeptics can. If no one does in a day or so I will.
We have to consider all hypotheses and evaluate their relative likelihoods, you can’t just dismiss things out of hand.
Yeah if you can rule them out. But you haven’t done that. You’ve merely said the probability is low. That’s not ruling it out, that is merely to state that it has a low frequency of occurrence over some defined interval of time.
According to ID theory, objects exhibiting high level of FI can’t be produced by chance or by necessity or a combination of both. Therefore, they are designed. This is ID in a nutshell.
But we just agreed the probability, even if we assume the most implausible of all the chance hypotheses, the tornado in a junkyard, isn’t zero. So we simply can’t say it can’t be produced “by chance”.
And we’ve seen no work be done to rule out necessity at all, or any combination of chance and necessity. For example we’ve seen no attempt at estimating the probability of anything using evolution, which is NOT like a tornado in a junkyard. Evolution is like I described me descenting through ten generations of ancestors, that’s how we get from some ancestral sequence to one that looks very unlikely after the fact.
So we still have to see a probability for the design hypothesis, you’re not getting away from this.
What I find strange about the ID position on this point is that it is based on nothing at all, just a hunch. A speculation. There’s no evidence for it, and only evidence against it.
That’s exactly what is wrong with the ID argument, and I’m glad you’ve finally realized why. Take one of those functional proteins in humans that Gpuccio has attempted to show has grown larger in the lineage leading to Homo sapiens. Over millions of consecutive generations, this protein has incrementally grown larger by adding hundreds of amino acids.
In the same way, my genome has accumulated mutations through generations. So now, after the fact, the protein looks like a very unlikely combination of amino acids, and my genome looks like a very unlikely combination of nucleotides. So now you come along and says, hold on, you’re drawing a target around your genome, that’s the texas sharpshooter fallacy.
Correct! So exactly the same thing is wrong with Gpuccio focusing on a particular protein having grown incrementally larger over 500 million years, and then declaring after the fact that the outcome of this cumulative process of mutation adding amino acids, looks unlikely in hindsight. Yes it does, but so would any such long process of mutations. Whether it accumulated amino acids, or substituted some for others, or deleted some. However such a 500 million year long process of incremental change happens, it will look unlikely after those 500 million years. What does that tell us? Nothing, it tells us nothing. It’s fallacious thinking, and it’s a good thing you are able to see why.
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Okay, thank you Bill. I’ll be waiting.
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