We can always split this off into a separate thread if I am not being on topic. I found this passage from Dawkins rather instructive;
To ‘tame’ chance means to break down the very improbable into less improbable small components arranged in series. No matter how improbable it is that an X could have arisen from a Y in a single step, it is always possible to conceive of a series of infinitesimally graded intermediates between them. However improbable a large-scale change may be, smaller changes are less improbable. And provided we postulate a sufficiently large series of sufficiently finely graded intermediates, we shall be able to derive anything from anything else, without invoking astronomical improbabilities. We are allowed to do this only if there has been sufficient time to fit all the intermediates in. And also only if there is a mechanism for guiding each step in some particular direction, otherwise the sequence of steps will career off in an endless random walk.
It is the contention of the Darwinian world-view that both these provisos are met, and that slow, gradual, cumulative natural selection is the ultimate explanation for our existence. If there are versions of the evolution theory that deny slow gradualism, and deny the central role of natural selection, they may be true in particular cases. But they cannot be the whole truth, for they deny the very heart of the evolution theory, which gives it the power to dissolve astronomical improbabilities and explain prodigies of apparent miracle.
Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design (p. 452).
I find this argument as bad as any ID argument from probability if not worse.
All good so make an argument on the merits. I am sure you understand statistics better then I do given your education and time. All that being said I had 6 courses in statistics at UC Berkeley although in the stone age . I have a fair grasp or molecular biology so we can learn together. You and Joshua try to use math for fundamental arguments as an authority. Math is not an authority it is a tool to understand the natural world. Math set up with faulty assumptions is garbage. I know you realize this. I know Joshua realizes this.
Inference to the best explanation is not always based on statistics. Darwin’s theory was based on the inference that evolution was a better explanation for life’s diversity then creation.
So what is the probability that you can generate a sentence similar to the sentence above but with a slightly different meaning? About 500 bits of functional information.
Try repeating that to yourself every time you’re tempted to use the ID “it’s too improbable for natural processes, therefore DESIGN!!” garbage argument.
ok, I won’t say that poker discards involve intelligent design. What in your analogy is analogous to natural selection?
One can, I assume, calculate the probability of a royal flush given that the game being played is five card draw poker. One can certainly discard cards stupidly, reducing the probability of a royal flush.
But if we coded a software program to play the hands using the optimal discard strategy the mere discard and replace changes the probabilities not one whit. So where’s the selection that improves the odds or reduce the likelihood? It’s not there.
Further, trying to draw to a royal flush requires knowledge. It requires a goal. It’s teleological. In order to draw using an optimal strategy our software program would need to know what to discard.
So I don’t think your analogy works. Back to the drawing board. (Pun intended.)
“Natural selection” kills off the discards (deleterious mutations) and allows the beneficial cards (beneficial or neutral) to accumulate and live one more generation. Like you couldn’t figure that out.
What did I ask?
Of course what did the IDer respond with?
Stock off-the-shelf hand waves, the knee-jerk ID reaction to everything.
Actually, no, one does not have to take into account all those millions upon millions of generation with the feedback from selection included. Lacking any actual evidence of any effects from natural selection there is no reason to take it into account. Ockham’s Razor and all that.
In fact, if the findings of neutral theory are correct then we should actually favor a model where selection was not operating.
Simply speculating that natural selection must have been involved is pan-adaptationism. Isn’t it?
You do if you’re making a valid argument from actual probabilities. Of course if you’re an IDC propagandist just putting up BS calculations to fool scientifically illiterate True Believers then of course you can skip that step.
It’s my understanding that natural selection cannot look ahead and select for some future desired state. It is not my fault that people who argue against ID cannot frame their arguments in a way more in keeping with the theory of evolution. To paraphrase Dawkins, evolution isn’t like that.
That one is a real beauty too. Did you folks know according to Mung science has never found any evidence anywhere that natural selection has any effect on a population?
Does anyone still wonder why I view inputs like that as mere trolling?
I’ll graciously assume that @Timothy_Horton merely misunderstood my comment about natural selection. I by no means meant to imply that there was no evidence for natural selection ever occurring. I was under the impression that we were talking about a specific scenario, such as the evolution of a specific protein, since that was the example he raised.
If we have evidence that natural selection was involved in the evolution of the protein of course that should be taken into account. But we should not just assume it, nor should we assume that natural selection was involved every step of the way.
I think my point about neutral theory still stands.
Now on to Timothy’s poker analogy.
We need to say what it is that feedback increases the probability of. Presumably, it increases the probability of a straight flush. But is that so?
Of course, the probability of getting a straight flush is higher in draw poker than it is in a game of poker where you are simply dealt five cards and must play those cards provided you don’t toss into the muck the cards in your hand that can be used to make a royal flush. But evolution isn’t like that.
You can have all the feedback you like, but if you keep discarding cards 10-A you may never see a straight flush. So feedback isn’t the issue. The issue is knowing what to retain in light of a future as yet unrealized goal. Something not available to evolution.
It would appear that bad arguments for evolution are no less frequent than bad arguments for ID.
The stupid strawman arguments for evolution anti-science ID-Creationists make up are certainly bad. But then again they’ve had a lot of practice in producing bad science.
swamidass
(S. Joshua Swamidass)
Split this topic
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That’s a rather easy thing to demonstrate. In E. coli the mutation rate for antibiotic resistance is about 1 in 250 million divisions. If we transfer a few billion bacteria to liquid media containing antibiotics and then come back the next day we find trillions of bacteria with the mutation for antibiotic resistance. If we start with 1 billion bacteria there should only be about 4 bacteria with the mutation, but instead we find trillions. That is highly improbable for a random process, but it isn’t a random process. The reason for this highly improbable outcome is natural selection.
There is massive evidence for natural selection. All you need to do is compare several genomes and measure sequence conservation. You will find that regions of functional DNA have higher sequence conservation than genomic regions that lack function.
Why ignore all of the evidence and experiments that were used to test that assumption?
Have I said that there is not? The question is the extent to which natural selection needs to be invoked for a specific case and whether it should be invoked without looking first at the actual evidence.
When Joshua declares that Darwinism is dead he’s not just preaching to ID people. That pan-selectionism is known to be false needs to be taken seriously by all involved. Including Dawkins.
At this point I don’t think we are talking about the same thing.
No, I assert that conscious intelligence is the only known source of functional information. The only one who has challenged this assertion is Joshua with his own assertion that cancer can create functional information. I also think this assertion could also include the adaptive immune system.
In all cases this requires the preexistence of functional information so for the time being my claim stands. If we narrow the definition of function we then are back to conscious intelligence being the only source. So for a specific claim I would say that conscious intelligence is most likely the source of the origin of the ubiquitin system.
“Of course, large quantities of evolutionary change may be non-adaptive, in which case these alternative theories may well be important in parts of evolution, but only in the boring parts of evolution, not the parts concerned with what is special about life as opposed to non-life.”–Ricahrd Dawkins, “The Blind Watchmaker”
Dawkins is just more interested in the positive adaptions. He is fully aware that the majority of genetic change is non-adaptive.
Then what are you talking about? If we are asking about the evolution of a gene then why isn’t sequence conservation and phylogenetics a test for natural selection?
I have lots of evidence that this claim has been out there for the four years I have known about and
that no one has come up with another source of de novo functional information. If someone does they will be $5 million dollars richer.
No, I think this claim is unsupportable. Start with the origin of the spliceosome.
I think Eric’s argument of information non growth is probably right and applicable to biology although my thoughts here are subject to change based on further evidence and arguments.
