If you can’t create an interactome that works in the lab, then it’s virtually certain that no natural process can do this.
Because saying “I measured a continuous variable, and I don’t have any conclusion” is not going to be a good result.
Well, I listened to an expert talk about this, and I understood what he was saying fairly well. One basic problem is that complex molecules go to pieces in the kind of temperatures found in hydrothermal vents.
Because Pelzer knows the field, hydrothermal vents were in his area. And Tour is well versed in creating molecules, I suggest you address Pelzer and Tour’s comments directly, if you also are an expert.
Because their points are fairly accessible, such as Tour saying for years that the formose reaction is not a good way to make sugars on early earth, and OOL researchers have confirmed this now. Such as Tour pointing out the homochirality is no longer optional in abiogenesis scenarios. And so on…
No comprendo, what do you mean by “Axe’s extrapolation”? The objection was that a more complex approach was better for some reason, which reason was not made clear. The reviewers obviously thought Axe’s simpler approach was adequate.
And here, again, is an example of your intellectual dishonesty.
First of all, exactly what expertise in chemistry do you and the rest of Tour’s adoring minions have that allows you to know he isn’t feeding you a pile of horseshit?
Moreover, when defending Doug Axe’s one paper you keep saying that, because it passed peer review and has not been retracted, its finding must be valid.
Well, tell me, exactly how many of those papers Tour claims to have read and discredited were not peer reviewed? And how many were retracted?
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He has done so several times before. In that video at 41:19 he starts blathering about the protein folding problem.
Tour is so monumentally confused he seems to think Levinthat’s paradox shows proteins actually can’t fold at all and that God is required to fold them up, otherwise it would take more than the lifetime of the universe for a protein to search through the total conformational space before it found it’s local minima. Yes, he is that completely out of his depth here. This can’t be overstated. This is one of his dumbest points (and he’s got several competitors).
He even started blathering about it in the debate he lost to Dave Farina, and the “interactome” nonsense he brings up is wrong and misguided for basically the same reasons. The number of potential protein-protein interactions is irrelevant, since the vast majority will never occur.
This man is not a realiable guide to understanding biology, nor reasearch into the origin of life.
Who told you what, specifically?
What am I denying, specifically?
This is where you need to start reading for comprehension.
Yeah I haven’t argued any of that and it’s clear you’re not understanding what is being said.
Tour brings up the interactome in the form of the total number of potential protein-protein interactions as if it is some sort of argument against the origin of life. He seems to think this is either something that has to be somehow assembled at the origin of life, by chance, or searched until the right combination in some vast space is found by blind chance.
Either option betrays his total lack of comprehension. Since the number of potential (not actual, not real) interactions that could occur never actually do occur and are in fact thermodynamically unfavored, they’re not real interactions that have to be sampled, searched for, designed, or whatever.
They’re simply not real. They are a thought-experiment. A theoretical result from a calculation, but the result never obtains in physical reality. It’s mental masturbation. Like trying to calculate how many different ways all the atoms that made up your latest bowl of soup could be combined.
I actually recommend you watch Dave Farina’s entire series debunking Tour. It’s quite instructive.
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In conclusion: I was right and you didn’t understand any of it and this is just you trying to distract from this fact.
You began this entire exchange by insisting primitive cell-membrane analogues could not exhibit any of the functions that could be useful to primitive cells without complex ion or protein transport machinery, and I showed this to be false. I did have to spend an inordinate amount of time explaining basic concepts to you, but we got here eventually.
Time for you to pick another plot of land to plant these goalposts on.
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As already explained Tour’s ramblings about “interactomes” are nonsensical blather not even relevant to the question of how the first forms of life arose.
Yes it does. You now add new potential interactions.
Done, case closed. You just responded in a way that proves you have no idea what is even being discussed here. It’s pathetic. You know so little you don’t even know that your statements don’t make sense and contradict yourself.
This is ridiculous.
You are perpetually confused.
You were asked to provide examples of OoL researchers claiming that, in the near future, they will be able to synthesize living organisms in the lab from simple, non-living components.
That paper makes no such claim.
- You were asked to cite when Douglas Axe had responded. You are not Douglas Axe. Are you?
- The rest of your comment illustrates that you are either a pathological liar, or have a very poor memory. Arthur responded in the comment below:
And you even replied to him (irrelevantly and ineffectually, of course) here:
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It is virtually certain that natural processes, given hundreds of millions of years, can. But then I’m a biochemist and you and Tour aren’t.
You also don’t understand the concept of the interactome.
That’s just inane. So are you admitting that he was trying to be dishonest? If not, why would measuring a continuous variable not lead to any conclusion? Be specific, not evasive.
Did Axe’s other papers, in which he did measure activity, not have conclusions?
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Which expert, and how did you measure his expertise? Name both.
Why are you afraid of looking into the evidence for yourself? No faith?
I’m certain you didn’t.
Then how do the organisms that live there possibly survive?
https://www.science.org/content/article/entire-ecosystem-lives-beneath-scorching-hydrothermal-vents
Did Tour mention them?
Simplistic, false claims typically are. You just falsely claimed that the organisms that live in hydrothermal vents either can’t exist or can’t have complex molecules. Which?
It appears that you just violated the Ninth Commandment yet again.
Of course you don’t know. You’d be far more honest if you responded to everything with “no comprendo.” Axe’s extrapolation is the one that is repeatedly regurgitated by IDcreationists, usually spicing it up by falsely describing it as an “estimate” or a “finding.”
It’s perfectly clear if you understand undergraduate-level biochemistry. Or even basic principles of measurement. Your replying by merely quoting Axe was an act of bad faith if you didn’t understand.
Please stop this dishonesty. Your ONLY criterion for viewing someone as an expert is that they say something you wish to be true. The ONLY one. Then you hypocritically tout mostly irrelevant expertise that they have while ignoring all expertise of others.
Is hypocrisy a Christian thing to do?
Another violation of the Ninth Commandment. You have no idea what the reviewers thought or didn’t think. There are known weaknesses of peer review.
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Apologies for the delay on approving posts. I have moved the thread to Side Convo.
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Amazingly, after all this time and so much discussion on the topic, and despite Lee clearly being in possession of Axe’s paper and having quoted from it, he is still not aware that Axe’s method is fundamentally based on extrapolation to L=153 from the per-position pass-rate of four ~10 residue fragments.
That is, from 40 residues out of a protein 153 residues in length. Axe even shows the calculation in the “Implications” section.
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And here is the description that started the discussion off, the pertinent statement being: “It’s being used by T7 RNA polymerase to make RNA. ATP is one of the four RNA nucleotides (the three others being UTP, GTP, and CTP).”
Again, the points he makes are fairly accessible, it’s not rocket science. As in Tour’s challenges! Just hook up a few molecules properly, can you do that? Nope. There are just too many combinations, and no good way to control them. And so on.
Certainly peer review and no retraction is good evidence a paper is valid, but you and others are not satisfied with this with Axe’s paper, and I agree! It should still stand up to outside investigation, publication is not a guarantee of truth. But Tour’s point is different, that what they do is not what they claim! They are claiming results outside of their papers, to the press and the public, that don’t match what they are actually accomplishing, which is very little.
But you changed the question! I was asking about his challenges, which is the point of this thread, where is Levinthal’s paradox in them?
I’m sure you are misunderstanding Tour’s view, since Tour says he doesn’t think OOL problems will never be solved. So he’s not going to do God-of-the-gaps here, and work on Levinthal’s paradox is ongoing, and they’re not done yet, evidently.
Well, sure, who said they would? But not just any old set of interactions will work, is the point, and if you are correct in implying it’s not some very difficult problem, then why have none of the challenged researchers answered Tour’s fifth challenge? Why don’t you answer it?
Why does it matter? Are you saying if you put all the needed proteins in a cell, they won’t interact? That’s absurd.
Wait, you’re saying that if you assemble all the components of a cell, no thermodynamically unfavored interaction sets will occur? Why is that?
Ah, Professor Dave! But he’s not a professor, he’s a YouTube voice. And here is a summary from an ID perspective of their “debate”. Dave resorted mainly to insults, and did not respond specifically to Tour’s challenges. Like the OOL scientists have not responded to Tour’s challenges, neither has anyone here. And I recommend Tour’s 14-part series debunking Professor Dave!
Oops! You didn’t address what I said, you just claim victory.
Well, you didn’t, actually semi-permeable membranes are not selective, and you can’t let just any molecule in and out of a cell. And I mentioned that if a vesicle encloses the surrounding liquid, it starts in equilibrium. So molecules are not going to move in and out to reach equilibrium, it’s already there. And why will this initial sample from its environment be appropriate for the protocell’s needs? Lucky cell. So selective transport is not an optional add-on, cells have them for a reason, for example, to maintain a needed ion gradient, equilibrium with its environment will mess a cell up.
Time for you to pick another plot of land to plant your banner of victory on!
But none of this addresses what I said, the question is about the claim to be close to producing life in the lab! And if we can’t do this in the lab, for sure nature cannot do it in some warm, little pool.
Protein-protein interactions? Those are the main focus, you can’t just leave them out, and not get them started properly too.
Please review the exchange again, which I repeated above, you challenged me to produce a claim that a home run (meaning solving the homochirality problem) was done. This I did. You have changed the challenge, so of course the paper I reference doesn’t satisfy your new challenge.
As far as providing examples of OOL researchers claiming that, in the near future, they will be able to synthesize living organisms in the lab from simple, non-living components, I gave the link to the video where Tour names names, and specified the year the claims were made. I then asked why the named researchers apparently have never said they never made such a claim. I certainly would speak up, if someone says I made a prediction I never made.
No, but Axe did respond to Art Hunt’s initial comments, which he sent to Axe for review, and subsequently posted.
Well, that’s great, because you have been denying that for several weeks now. Good to see something finally got thru to you.
Yes, that is Tour’s claim. And he is full of shit as usual. Certainly, you have failed to produce any quotations in which scientists actually do this.
This is reminiscent of how Tour first emerged as a figure in the culture wars over evolution. He made the audacious claim that evolutionary scientists routinely admitted to him, in secret behind closed doors, that no one actually understands how evolution works.
To this day, not a single person has confirmed that they told him this. I conclude he was lying.
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Ed Peltzer, a retired chemist, whose field was oceanography, and he did research on hydrothermal vents. He was a student of Jeffrey Bada and Stanley Miller. Here is the video of his discussion with James Tour, which includes some discussion of Peltzer’s work on hydrothermal vents. And this would be one example of looking into the evidence myself, since I want to examine my beliefs and conclusions. Blind faith is not actually a Biblical concept, sorry, Dawkins and Kierkegaard.
Maybe you could watch the video, and point out the parts that only experts could understand. I don’t recall any.
They are indeed amazing creatures! You have no doubt heard of extremophiles, life exists in some very astonishing ways, in some very astonishing places. But this does not disprove the point, that complex molecules in isolation do not hold up in hydrothermal vents, that is the point you need to disprove, if you maintain that life originated, or even started to develop, in these places.
I would have to rewatch the video to be sure, I don’t recall that he did, likely because the discussion was about origin of life, not extremophiles.
Well, you need to show their claims are false, whether they are simple or not. And I did not claim that the organisms that live in hydrothermal vents either can’t exist or can’t have complex molecules. Again, I’m well aware of extremophiles, and I again point out that origin of life does not involve organisms, or the molecules they have.
You tell me what you think of it, but you still haven’t told me what it is!
So the reviewers of Axe’s paper apparently didn’t understand undergraduate-level biochemistry. Or even basic principles of measurement. I consider that unlikely. And again, the claim is made that a more complex approach was better for some reason, without giving the reason.
But I’m not being dishonest, I’m in this forum, listening and evaluating what you and others say, as well as what ID people say. And you people are not making a good case for your view, I must say. Even a rube like me can find problems with your statements, none of your points even in this post have proven to be cogent and unanswerable. And then science itself is not some sort of area where we expect complete and unanimous agreement, and no discussion.
Certainly I don’t claim knowledge of the reviewers’ actual thoughts! By “they thought” I meant “they concluded”. Another non-point, which is easily answered. My point is that it’s more likely that the reviewers did a good job, Axe even mentions that they were experts in their field. People don’t get to be reviewers for a scientific journal without some substantial qualifications.
You gave two challenges, per the exchange I quoted, and the exchange you quoted! I answered both of them.
I agree, I don’t deny this.
But I went through each point Axe made, showed Art Hunt how they were relevant, and he did object, but he didn’t refute the points I made. And then withdrew. And I have repeatedly challenged people here to show how Axe’s response is incorrect, and only Rumraket has actually set out to do this, and this discussion with him has tailed off, where he didn’t respond to my latest post.
Please defend your claim! And show where Axe’s response was insubstantial, or wrong.
Eh? How do Axe’s responses to four common objections not address the issues, and do not indicate a basic understanding of them? Or maybe you meant that I did not address the issues, or understand them? But if so, this is irrelevant, I was quoting Axe, not presenting my view.
I’m tempted to say to you that “You really don’t know how to think properly, not at all”.
Actually, I didn’t propose a definition of a delusion, and I meant what people usually mean by the term: “a false idea or belief” (Merriam-Webster). Exactly. And that includes what psychiatrists mean by this, which admittedly is more technical: “a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary” (Merriam-Webster, again)
And this thread is actually about “James Tour and his 60-day challenge”, we can continue discussing whether psychiatrists do in fact look for unreasoning causes when they listen to their client’s complaints, in the other thread where this came up.