Same here.
I’ve lost count of the number of projects that I’ve worked on that have multiple superfluous layers where each layer does nothing but copy data from one structure to another identical structure before passing it verbatim to the next. For no reason whatsoever other than That Is How We Do Things™.
So, yeah, don’t answer that one. For some of us, it touches a raw nerve.
Still, performing a useless function is different from performing no function.
Has this been observed in the present?
How does natural selection “discover” it? Does natural selection have a mind to tell variation to stay in the “happy zone”?
Yes. Your own existence if evidence. You have 100-300 mutations that are present in neither of your parents. Yet here you are.
The article below by Richard Dawkins gives a good explanation (It’s most famous as the origin of the term “meme”, but that was only a side point in the article):
To summarize briefly: Once you have a “population” of simple self-replicating molecules, there will be a competition between them in which those that replicate most effectively would outnumber and crowd out those that are less effective.
On factor that determines effective replication is the degree of variation that arises from “mutations” (which may not strictly be the correct term here as we are not necessarily speaking of genetic material at this point.)
Molecules that have no or minimal mutation will be the most stable and, in a constant environment, would probably be the ones the predominate. In this situation, evolution would not occur because there would be little variation and the molecules would not evolve much beyond their original state.
However, they would be very vulnerable to any changes in the environment that made it more difficult to replicate. They would be unable to respond to such changes, and just die out.
Molecules that replicated imperfectly, OTOH, would be able to respond to such changes. However, if there replication is too inaccurate they would be unstable and unlikely to maintain a comformation that works in a given environment. So they too would die out.
The molecules that survive would be the ones that best balance stability and responsivity to change, the ones in the “happy zone.” These are the ones who survived long enough to become your ancestors.
So, as you see, no mind is needed. All that is needed are organic self-replicating molecules that replicate imperfectly to various degrees.
BTW, unless I missed it, I don’t think you’ve responded to my comment below. Any thoughts on this?
No, but that’s the whole point of natural selection, it doesn’t have to have a mind for variation to say in the happy zone. I’m surprised by your question because it seems to me if you actually understood natural selection you would see how the question basically answers itself. “Staying in the happy zone” is what natural selection is all about.
not in this case. my claim is different: im talking about getting the same function again, not just any function.
i actually refer to this article by dr theobald:
“. Thus, functional cytochrome c sequences are virtually unlimited in number, and there is no a priori reason for two different species to have the same, or even mildly similar, cytochrome c protein sequences.”
“In the absence of common descent, the chance of this occurrence is conservatively less than 10-93 (1 out of 1093)”-
so according to his own calculation if evolution is true we should not find even a single case of say 100 amino acids that evolved by convergent evolution. and yet we do find such a case and thus evolution is false according to theobald own prediction.
first: im also talking about theobald claim, which is unrelated to panda thumb article. but lets take art numbers. he is talking about 10^10-10^15 for a specific function/domain. even by these numbers we will probably need something like 10^30 mutations to evolve 2 protein domains. and many proteins require more than that.
the emphasis here is on “could”. what make you think that all functional sequences are close to each other in the sequence space? maybe a globin for instance cant evolve to a cytochrome c in small steps? maybe histone h3 cant evolve in small steps to keratin etc.
No we don’t. Not a single case. Just flat out false.
No, just function. Functions are what matters here, not what structure implements it.
Completely made up. Please show your work. How do you go from “some function exists at a rate of 1 in every 10^15 sequences of some length L” to “therefore we probably need 10^30 mutations to evolve 2 protein domains”. It just doesn’t follow in any way that I can see.
Many more what? What proteins are those, and what is it they require, and what do you know about how this had to evolve?
Yes, if you’re going to claim evolution couldn’t produce X, you need to show the couldn’t. If you can’t show the couldn’t, you haven’t ruled out the could. If you haven’t ruled out the could, you can’t reject evolution. Phylogenies imply the could, all by themselves. And of course we have now over half a century of biochemstry that implies that, in general, yes, new proteins with novel functions can evolve by numerous different methods.
We have examples of overlapping functions in sequence space. Entire superfamilies of proteins are known to be capable of performing literally tens of thousands of distinct functions.
We have examples of novel functional proteins being generated from random sequences, of non-coding DNA evolving into de novo proteins, and of the emergence of genes with novel functions from random combinations of pieces of existing genes.
I don’t think that. What I do think is that you should try to relax your absolutist, dichotomous thinking. This thing with “all” vs “none” is a big part of your problem. Another is your insistence on some particular transition you can think of.
Maybe it can’t, but I’m not aware of those transitions being required to have occurred in the inferred history of life. Is cytochrome c required to have evolved from a globin, or keratin from histones? No. So whether those particular transitions are possible is simply flat out irrelevant.
You are aware that ability to break down beta lactam antibiotics have evolved multiple times, by dissimilar (non-convergent) protein sequences? And that the class of enzymes Axe did his work on belong to a superfamily of enzymes with different functions, that is they had other functions that overlapped the beta-lactamase function in sequence space? I take it the answer to these questions are all no.
So here we really do know that the answer is that Axe’s enzyme “could have” evolved from other proteins. We know they did. In some cases, from an entirely different family of enzymes. Meaning the function has evolved at least twice, one time from two different families of enzymes each. Meaning we know each of these two families of enzymes have other functions overlapping with them in protein sequence space.
Naturally you don’t know this, as you probably get all your information from ID-creationist sources. It’s certainly not found in Axe’s papers, is not ever being explained on Evolution News & Science Today, and can’t be found anywhere in Stephen Meyer’s books.
And, similarly, according to the theory that unicorns do not exist, we should not find magical supernatural horses with a single horn growing from their foreheads running around.
Yet we do find magical supernatural horses with a single horn growing from their foreheads running around.
Can you spot the flaw in this argument?
I’m the same species as my parents with the same genetic structure. We’re talking about a creature with a different genetic structure.
Ok. I’ll read it. Does he explain how and why the different sexes arise since molecules just self-replicate?
I don’t have enough knowledge on the science yet to make a good response other than I need to study genetic drift. How does it drift? The article I read said that if there’s too much genetic exchange during reproduction, it will lead to miscarriages. The biology doesn’t allow those organisms to continue to reproduce across generations. So what’s the mechanism? That’s what I’m still trying to understand.
But Dennis Hoffman proved that’s impossible through his evolutionary simulations.
You realize you just argued for God to be involved? That’s what his argument is.
Uhm, no. I thought he “proved” it doesn’t always select for what he called “veridical perception”, and that this depends a lot on the particular properties of the physical world in which evolution occurs.
Of course, if that’s what you meant by “the happy zone”, then that was not clear from any context, and since you got the term “happy zone” from @Timothy_Horton I assumed you were using it the way he did. It was clear to me he was merely talking about natural selection keeping some population of organisms adapted to their environment.
Wait, this sounds fun. Let me see if I can play too.
Did I play the game right?
Oops, forgot to ask the $64,000 question: Can you spot the flaw in my argument?
Lol. I don’t have enough scientific knowledge to make sense of what you’re saying.
All I know is that he says we shouldn’t exist therefore we live in a video-game type world where there is only consciousness and everything else is icons.
Look, I’m just using the words of the people you refer to. And I concede that, when I read a post like the one @Timothy_Horton wrote(the one that contained the term “happy zone” which you responded to), I am making some assumptions that Tim and I understand the same thing by the term natural selection.
If we can put the question of whatever it is this Hoffman fellow might have proved aside for the moment, I hope we can both agree on what natural selection is. If we can both agree on at least that much, we can then proceed to try to understand what Tim might have meant in his post concerning this “happy zone”.
I think it would be useful if you either explain to me what you understand natural selection to be, in your own words, or perhaps to go and read about it. Before we discuss anything else at all, we have to be clear on what natural selection is. What kind of process it is.
I find it curious and amusing that I frequently see this number quoted as 98.7% when it should be (assuming it’s based on the original chimp genome paper) 98.8%. Apparently people subtract a 1.23% divergence from 100% and get 98.7%.
That’s not right. Shortish indels contribute 1.5% unique sequence to each genome (which you really shouldn’t add together to get 3%), and larger structural variants another ~3%, most of it in recently duplicated segments.
You do have a different genetic structure, by 100-300 mutations.
No, it answers the question you asked in the comment to which I responded. You are now asking a completely different questions, for reasons best known to you alone.
You don’t need to understand that to understand the article. The article addresses the specific time scale issue that was troubling you. Again, you are now throwing in another issue that does not pertain to that one.
No, I don’t. Tell me how I did that.
Yes, evolution does not say “we should not find 100 amino acids.” What a ridiculous thing for you to claim.
Whereas, in your original comment you said that there have been instances detected in which identical 100 amino acid sequences have arisen thru convergent evolution.
I’m calling BS on that. So let’s see these examples you claim exist.
I read through 1/3 of the article and it’s ridiculous, so I stopped No citations of the science. It’s completely a history of what could have happened. How is this more authoritative than Genesis 1? It’s a story.
It’s a proper assumption. I was going to use the term “Goldilocks zone” which may be more familiar. Not too hot, not too cold, just right. Selection has caused population to evolve to a point where they do not have too few mutations to provide for adaptation, do not have too many mutations causing populations to crash, but just enough mutations to allow for continued adaptation and therefore survival to environmental changes.