So you want to see an example of a “net increase in information”, “in the long run”. And for “Lenski’s LTEE”, you want to see a gain that sticks around for a couple of decades? Why must it stick around for a couple of decades in the LTEE? Nobody claims the LTEE will yield a net gain in information, nor that any particular gain that should happen will stick around in that experiment.
And why must there occur a net gain in H1N1, and are you going to be here in “less than a century” to check if that have occurred?
And who of us is going to be around in a few thousand years for humans? You’ve basically defined the situation to be practically untestable then. For you to be convinced that something has evolved opposite to your GE “prediction”, we need to stick around for a few thousand years, or maybe up to a century? And until we do, you’re convinced GE is correct. And even if we could for bacteria in a realistic timeframe, you can just dismiss that as only applying to irrelevant microbes or w/e. How convenient.
Why these oddly specific examples, instead of some more generalized limitations that can be applied more broadly to a host of species and circumstances, and some explanations for why you set the barriers like you do? I think you lost track of the context in which you were asked for what constitutes “the long run”.
What should we do with all that evidence anatomically modern humans have been around for a few hundred thousand years, and that their hominid ancestors were around for a few million years before that?
The papers by Sanford et al. are about fitness, not “information”. That GE talks about “information” is something added on to that, not in their original papers. Creationists cannot make up their minds about which.
Timothy, to Giltil:
“LOL! Look at the backpedal! First it was impossible for mutations to produce new information. Now it’s possible but the gains are modest.”
“What, never?” “Well, hardly ever”
W. S. Gilbert, HMS Pinafore
This is where he came back with the extra qualification that the information needs to be retained “in the long run”.
Imagine we show an example of a species of plant that suffered whole genome-duplication, then over about a century lots of these genes had been degrading as they were totally redundant. Perhaps in total there has been an increase in information, as some of the duplicates might be beneficial and are under purifying selection. The vast majority were unnecessary and probably carried a slight energetic cost, so were being selected against. Over any particular stretch of time, we would see genes degrading by beneficial loss of function mutations.
Giltil will look at this and see it conforms to his GE preconceptions. Never mind that if we compare the present to the ancestral state there’s been a net gain in number of useful genes, because what’s mostly happened at the molecular level is degeneration and loss of redundant genes. One big original duplication, and then lots and lots of losses.
This is where we run into the quintessential creationistic dodge. They define duplication to be “modification of function”, or some times completely irrelevant, not a gain. That allows them to claim that an organism that ends up with a net increase in the number of beneficial genes under purifying selection, is still mostly loss of function, because most of the extra genes having resulted from WGD are being degraded by loss of function or loss of information mutations.
The whole concept of GE and similar kinds of “devolution” ideas from Behe are misleadingly defined to be unfalsifiable.
What I said is that IN THE LONG RUN, a net gain of information would falsify GE. And I didn’t change my story. So you’re wrong again. Is it a habit with you?
With its LTEE, Lenski has designed such an experiment. Unfortunately for the proponents of the primary axiom, this experiment went the wrong way for after several decades, instead of documenting a net increase of information, the opposite, ie., GE, was observed.
You claimed LONG RUN was a few thousand years for humans but you ran from the scientific evidence provided showing anatomically modern humans goes back at least two hundred thousand years and hominid ancestors back several million years.. By your own criteria GE is falsified.
Why do you think ignoring the evidence makes the evidence go away?
No, it wasn’t. You don’t even seem to know how Sanford defines genetic entropy. As many have pointed out to you GE says NOTHING about gains or losses of information.
Thanks – that’s what I remembered from Sanford. I think GE is based on a fundamental misunderstanding but it is at least a coherent idea. The stuff here about information just seems like a lot of conceptual mush to me.
Really? So you move an organism from a complex natural environment for which it has countless adaptations, to an artificial environment lacking almost all the challenges experienced in it’s natural one, meaning most of those adaptations are suddenly redundant, with the only one remaining being competition for the most simple possible resource (literally minimal media).
And somehow you think this experiment is ideally suited to test the predictions of GE? That’s fatuously self-serving. I doubt you even believe it yourself.
Unfortunately for the proponents of the primary axiom
What primary axiom? Who are the proponents of that axiom?
this experiment went the wrong way for after several decades
It went in the exact way it was expected to go given the circumstances. Let me quote it’s founder:
The LTEE was designed (intelligently, in my opinion!) to be extremely simple in order to address some basic questions about the dynamics and repeatability of evolution, while minimizing complications. It was not intended to mimic the complexities of nature, nor was it meant to be a test-bed for the evolution of new functions.
