Gpuccio: Functional Information Methodology

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

A few final observations. @gpuccio states that his purpose here is not scientific inquiry, but to confront neo-Darwinism.

@gpuccio

Finally, my contribution here is not aimed to publish a paper. So, I do not consider it as some form of peer review.

It is, instead, aimed at intellectual confrontation about a very inmportant paradigm difference: design against neo-darwinism to explain biological functions.

In that sense, it is much more precious than a peer review to me. But for very different reasons.

This seems to clear up a lot. In conversation with us, he has not modified his analysis or worked to include any controls in his analysis.

He has been working to his goal of “confronting” neo-Darwinism. He has been successful, to a degree, because confrontation has nothing to do with being right or wrong. However, he failed in one major way. None of us are advocating neo-Darwinism!!! Neo-Darwinism as defined by the ID movement (and by @gpuccio) is not modern evolutionary theory. We moved on from Darwinism, meaning positive selection dominated change, in 1968. Behe was in high school, and ID had nothing to do with it.

So what we have here is a performance of confrontation, not a scientific inquiry, instead we have theatre. I am glad he is upfront about this. I respect his honesty.

It seems that there is agreement here:

@glipsnort

Ah, so you already know that what you’re modeling is not standard evolutionary biology.

To summarize the situation as I see it: there are two distinct kinds of evolution being discussed here. One, call it evol_biol, is the evolution proposed by evolutionary biologists. In evol_biol, there are many possible new functions that a species could acquire, function is often a matter of degree, and adaptation for a single trait frequently can take many routes, each through multiple beneficial mutations. In the other, call it evol_gpuccio, each species has a single possible beneficial trait, function is binary (present or not), and it is achieved or lost by a single mutation.

Sequence conservation, and the entire machinery of BLAST searches and functional information, tests the probability of evol_gpuccio occurring. The argument against evol_biol, which is the kind of evolution everyone else is interested in, boils down to, “Read Behe’s book.”

@gpuccio

And I had just praised your lucidity at UD!

So let’s end on some common ground. @gpuccio affirms common descent, and that might be a more useful conversation to continue on in the near future:

@swamidass

One place of common ground appears to be @gpuccio’s affirmation of common descent, which makes his connection to Uncommon Descent somewhat of a misnomer. This puts him in a rare group of “theistic evolutionists” within ID, that includes Michael Behe and Denton.

However, at this point, I think we can let this thread end.

@gpuccio is arguing against a version of evolution that is different from contemporary understanding of biology and evolutionary science. It may well be correct that his version of evolution is impossible (and likely so!), but this has nothing to do with modern evolutionary science.

This topic will now auto-close tomorrow at 6pm. There are several interesting subtopics we can continue discussing in other threads. Let us keep these new threads more focused in scope, focused on the subtopics that arose.

@gpuccio thanks for engaging here, and I look forward to continuing the conversation!