Do all deer share a common ancestor?

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@John_Harshman

If most branches had no better than chance support, that would tell us that either there was no common descent or the data were inadequate. As it happens, we don’t have that problem. Test passed. If you think of that as a test for separate origins, that hypothesis is decisively rejected.

I think this point will help get clarity. Why won’t a common design provide branches with better than chance support?

[T_aquaticus]

@colewd

Why won’t a common design provide branches with better than chance support?

Because there is no reason to. You can’t come up with a reason. No ID/creationist can come up with a reason. There are millions and millions of reasons why a designer would not use a nested hierarchy.

[John_Harshman]

@colewd

I think this point will help get clarity. Why won’t a common design provide branches with better than chance support?

Wrong question. A better question would be to ask “Why would it?”

You’re just asking, with different phrasing, why common design would not produce a nested hierarchy, and the answer is simply that we have no reason to think it would, yet we have good reason to suppose that common descent does produce a nested hierarchy. So we’re back to this: what is the explanation for the nested hierarchy of deer species?

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@John_Harshman

You’re just asking, with different phrasing, why common design would not produce a nested hierarchy, and the answer is simply that we have no reason to think it would, yet we have good reason to suppose that common descent does produce a nested hierarchy. So we’re back to this: what is the explanation for the nested hierarchy of deer species?

Any process that reduces chance events will pass your test. Both common design and common descent reduce chance events. If you read between the lines this is something Winstons paper demonstrates.

The nested hierarchy or tree is not a differentiator here.

[John_Harshman]

@colewd

Any process that reduces chance events will pass your test. Both common design and common descent reduce chance events. If you read between the lines this is something Winstons paper demonstrates.

Incoherent again. This is not a topic you understand. Then again, it’s central to my profession. Could it be that I understand it better than you do?

[T_aquaticus]

@colewd

Any process that reduces chance events will pass your test. Both common design and common descent reduce chance events. If you read between the lines this is something Winstons paper demonstrates.

Ewert says just the opposite.

The dependency graph hypothesis predicts that there will be many modules which do not correspond to a taxonomic category, and a substantial portion of the genes should be attributed to these non-taxonomic modules rather than taxonomic modules. On the other hand, common descent predicts there would be few non-taxonomic modules, and most genes would remain attributed to the taxonomic modules. Therefore, if the inferred dependency graph is simply the tree of life with a few minor additions, that would suggest that the dependency graph hypothesis is incorrect.
–Winston Ewert
Ewert

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@John_Harshman

Incoherent again. This is not a topic you understand. Then again, it’s central to my profession. Could it be that I understand it better than you do?

Of course you understand this better then I do but that does not mean your test can eliminate common design.

The point of failure of your test is not robust enough to differentiate common design and common descent. It is only robust enough to differentiate common design or common descent from chance.

[John_Harshman]

@colewd

Of course you understand this better then I do but that does not mean your test can eliminate common design.

But it does mean that you are not competent to decide that it can or can’t, and it means that you have no idea what you’re talking about. Wouldn’t you say? (Also: thAn!!)

@colewd

The point of failure of your test is not robust enough to differentiate common design and common descent. It is only robust enough to differentiate common design or common descent from chance.

More incoherence, but I’ll see what I can do with it. It’s true that it’s impossible to test for common design without having some kind of expectation for what common design would produce. My contention is that nested hierarchy is not such an expectation. If you disagree, you need to explain why it would be an expectation. Failing that explanation, seeing nested hierarchy leads to a conclusion of common descent.

And once again, since you seem unwilling to see this: mere degrees of similarity do not produce nested hierarchy. This is one of the most basic understandings of phylogenetics, and that can’t be stressed enough.

[T_aquaticus]

@colewd

Of course you understand this better then I do but that does not mean your test can eliminate common design.

Parsimony eliminates design.

Now, since the days of Linnæus this principle has been carefully followed, and it is by its aid that the tree-like system of classification has been established. No one, even long before Darwin’s days, ever dreamed of doubting that this system is in reality, what it always has been in name, a natural system. What, then, is the inference we are to draw from it? An evolutionist answers, that it is just such a system as his theory of descent would lead him to expect as a natural system. For this tree-like system is as clear an expression as anything could be of the fact that all species are bound together by the ties of genetic relationship. If all species were separately created, it is almost incredible that we should everywhere observe this progressive shading off of characters common to larger groups, into more and more specialized characters distinctive only of smaller and smaller groups. At any rate, to say the least, the law of parsimony forbids us to ascribe such effects to a supernatural cause, acting in so whimsical a manner, when the effects are precisely what we should expect to follow from the action of a highly probable natural cause.
–George Romanes, “Scientific Evidences of Organic Evoution”, 1882
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19922/19922-h/19922-h.htm

@colewd

The point of failure of your test is not robust enough to differentiate common design and common descent.

It’s the same way we eliminate God planting fingerprints at a crime scene as an explanation for forensic evidence.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@John_Harshman

. My contention is that nested hierarchy is not such an expectation. If you disagree, you need to explain why it would be an expectation. Failing that explanation, seeing nested hierarchy leads to a conclusion of common descent.

My expectation that design would produce a nested hierarchy is because it will pass your test (for a nested hierarchy) as design reduces random chance events.

Winston showed how software programs that share code will generate a tree diagram.

[T_aquaticus]

@colewd

My expectation that design would produce a nested hierarchy is because it will pass your test (for a nested hierarchy) as design reduces random chance events.

Human designs reduce random chance events and they don’t fall into a nested hierarchy. Your claims make absolutely no sense. You can reduce random chance events and still not have a nested hierarchy.

@colewd

Winston showed how software programs that share code will generate a tree diagram.

He showed just the opposite.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@T_aquaticus

He showed just the opposite.

Here is the tree diagram for software modules.

http://dx.doi.org/10.5048/BIO-C.2018.3.f5

[T_aquaticus]

@colewd

Here is the tree diagram for software modules.

Look at figure 6. That’s a web, not a tree.

[John_Harshman]

@colewd

My expectation that design would produce a nested hierarchy is because it will pass your test (for a nested hierarchy) as design reduces random chance events.

More incoherence. Reduction of random chance events has absolutely nothing to do with producing a nested hierarchy.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@John_Harshman

More incoherence. Reduction of random chance events has absolutely nothing to do with producing a nested hierarchy.

It does in conjunction with building unique living animals that share common cellular components. I will try to be more explicit going forward.

[John_Harshman]

@colewd

It does in conjunction with building unique living animals that share common cellular components. I will try to be more explicit going forward.

Good. Also try to be more coherent as well. So far, neither.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@colewd

The unanswered question is how did so many of these potentially deleterious mutations get fixed in various populations?

The ones that fixed weren’t deleterious? You know, like in mice.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@colewd

You generate several thousand mice by the time one deer is generated.

That would increase the strength of selection in the mouse population. Deleterious mutations should have a harder time rising to higher frequency in mouse populations compared to deer populations.

[T_aquaticus]

@colewd

It does in conjunction with building unique living animals that share common cellular components.

Species can share common cellular components and not fall into a nested hierarchy. You still don’t seem to understand what a nested hierarchy is.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

Bill, just for laughs, please define “nested hierarchy” with no reference whatsoever to biology.