(I note that the discussion instantly veered away from the OP, but I’m OK with that if the mods are)
There seems to be a certain amount of “evolution can’t lead to complexity, and complexity is what I say it is, but I can’t really say what it is, but evolution definitely can’t lead to it”.
I think the request for a definition of complexity very early in the thread is the way to break the impasse.
Without one, I think the argument is… not quite circular, but bootless. If the key claim is that something undefinable is impossible…
You’ve not answered my question. Notice what just happened. Rather than answer my question of whether this difference between two situations is more or less complex, you jumped straight to insisting that complexity would have to be created. But that means you’ve indirectly conceded the point, you really do think it would be more complex, you just don’t like the idea of admitting it could evolve so you wanted to try to somehow stave off that admission and go straight to “it must have been created then”.
It is not stated above what this condition is that would make you say it is not necessarily more or less complex.
What you stated above is merely that you think if the cells on the outside of a colony express their genes differently from those inside of a colony then you would consider it “created complexity”. That still doesn’t say why you would not consider it more complex nor why you would perhaps consider it less complex.
Now you’re simply avoiding specifying what makes you think it might not be more or less complex. Again I have to note that you seem afraid of giving direct answers.
The fact that you give this same answer to this specific question too is completely meaningless. Consider the context again. I ask about whether a system consisting of two copies of the same gene that can perform a function that only a single such gene can not would be more complex to you, and you answer “what I stated above”. And what you “stated above” is “I would see that as created complexity expressing itself.”
That does not answer the question you were posed. Is it more or less complex if it can perform a new function? Your response simply does not constitute a coherent answer to that question.
Than what? Different than your above answers? Those are nonsensical.
Different than what it used to be? Well it clearly is because now you have a sequence with G instead of just As and Ts.
Another completely nonsensical answer. There is nothing in your “understanding of biology” that compels how you have answered the questions I have put to you. You’re basically just stating that you don’t think evolution can produce increases in complexity because you don’t think it has a mechanism for them to arise, but every single one of those examples I gave you is how complexity is increased by evolution. It shows the steps by which new genes and new functions can arise. But you don’t consider them increases in complexity. Which is hilarious, because imagine if I give all the examples I give in reverse.
You go from two identical genes that together can perform a function, and then you lose the extra copy and then lose the function, has it not then become less complex? You’d insist like a madman that this was a “loss of information”, “loss of complexity”, or “devolution”, or “genetic entropy in action”. But if we then reverse that again, it’s suddenly not in any way a gain of anything.
Sorry maam, you have revealed how utterly irrational you are on this subject.
Okay good, so you do agree that adding parts to the clock, even though it’s still “just a clock” would make it more complex. Now consider again the example I gave, with one gene doing 6 functions, becoming six genes doing 1 function each. You still have the same functions, but six components instead of 1. That’s one way evolution can produce increased complexity, and many examples are known. For example when promiscous(meaning they can do multiple functions simultaneously) enzymes are duplicated and the duplicates specialize towards specific ones of these functions.
Yes they can, that is not disputed by anyone. As I have stated many many times, evolution is not a theory that says complexity always will increase. There are circumstances under which that can occur, but they do not always obtain. But it CAN occur, and it can be shown to occur given those circumstances, and there are mechanisms by which that complexity can increase when the conditions are right.
I’d still say that makes it more complex. Not functionally complex, but more complex in terms of number of parts or constituents.
Good. Now go back again to the example where two copies of the same gene can perform a function that a single copy can not. You first denied that this would constitute an increase in complexity, and yet here you affirm it.
Sure there could, but what does that have to do with the hypothetical example I give? I specify a set of conditions in a hypothetical example in order to clarify whether I would consider something an increase in complexity. It is obviously to be taken for granted, in a hypothetical, that we know that those conditions obtain. Assuming those conditions, would you agree with me? Your answer is that we might not know those conditions. No, in reality we might not, but assuming there is some situation we do, would you not then agree?
I don’t think so. I think the baby grew to have the capability and complexity for those functions. I think the baby always had the potential for those functions, which is another way of stating that there is some future circumstance where the baby would grow to learn them.
Sure babies are highly complex, but I think adults are more so. I think the baby grows in complexity in almost every conceivable way. Babies grow from single cells, into trillions of cells in adulthood. Everything becomes more complex. The patterns of their behavior, the problems they can solve, the biochemical functions that take place in their bodies, the number of connections in the brain. Their cells differentiate in thousands of different ways from the stage of a single zygote (a fertilized egg cell), into skin cells, blood cells, muscle cells, organs, brain cells. There are thousands of genes that the zygote does not express, that become active and start interacting as different organs and tissues develop and mature.
So are you saying (i) the earliest life forms are as genetically complex as much later ones, say bees, orchids and elephants, and (ii) that far more genetically complex life forms could arise quite early (in an Old Earth evolutionary time scale) at the same time far less genetically complex forms were first appearing?
Unless evolution can lay down an empirical mechanism that allows rapid generation of novel complex genetic information, then it would seem that complexity needs to be explained and not buried.
No, I’m saying that is the conclusion that @thoughtful is forced to given her statements of what is and is not ‘complex’. This was made clear in subsequent comments, which you would have been well-served to have actually read.
Evolution has no difficulty in explaining either complexity or novelty, the only problem is when both are required simultaneously. To my knowledge, such is not required to explain any aspect of the history of life. Funnily enough…
Such as what? Novelty exists, and can be easily explained by evolution. Complexity exists and can be readily explained by evolution. Simultaneous complex novelty does not exist, except in such rare instances as to be explainable by extreme chance and large numbers.
Then that was a very bad way of asking the question. First, you would have to define “information”. You clearly don’t refer to Shannon information, because just duplicating a sequence increases the Shannon information. Nor do “information” and “complexity” mean the same thing. Here’s a thought: do you agree that a mutation can reduce information? If so, then the reverse mutation would increase information.
But yes, complexity and information are different. So yes, the information could change - especially, as if I understand it correctly, creationist theory is created heterozygosity - so if you had a homozygous population that then interbed back with the heterozygous population, you’d be increasing information back in the genome. The complexity of organisms in either population has remained the same. Lol, let me know if I’m making no sense. I don’t know if I understand any of this well enough to make sense.
I guess I’d define complexity as a fixed additional function, while maintaining all other functions. I was looking at a tree today and decided that, if the tree could walk, then it would be more complex. Calling J.R.R. Tolkien.
Carter has the basics right. The attempt to define Biological Information is about as good as any other effort to add the concept of “meaning” to a measure of information in the past 70 years. Unfortunately all of those are mostly useless.
I also think trying to define Biological Information is a misguided effort. We already know the information in DNA in encoded in the laws of chemistry, therefore forcing any other definition is doomed to failure.
You have it right!
Be careful about increasing/decreasing information though. We can increase/decrease the overall quantity of information, but changes within that volume are “moving sideways”, more or less, and always relative to other information.
I agree that progress is not inevitable. It seems likely that evolution has already arrived at many solutions that cannot be improved on. For example, can there be a chloroplast or mitochondria that is any more efficient that what is currently extant? Other current discussion mention equilibrium states, and once an equilibrium is reached then further progress is difficult; it may require some biological innovation that really is incredibly rare.
Could we use a very simple definition like, “The number of parts in the system?”
A system needing three parts is more complex than one with two parts.
A system that loss a part while retaining function may become “irreducibly complex”, but is really a simplification from a more complex system (maybe we should call it “Reduced Simplicity”).
I like this definition! Random assembly of a functioning system from many independent parts is very complex, but evolution simplifies that system into fewer parts operating with greater efficiency. The system ultimately speed the process of entropy, providing a driving force.
Yes, and they are neither consistent with reality nor each other. That’s the point. You are revising principles to justify your conclusion, which was derived from tribalism, not reasoning. That’s backwards.
So please share how share how such beneficial mutations arose or do arise and become fixed in the population. That’s why I pointed out which ones I’ve seen discussed. So you or others could provide your arguments for this increase in complexity.
I have not seen an argument for evolutionary complexity such that any population can gain a function without losing any other function. And that this can happen repeatedly (because progress is not inevitable) so it must happen and be lost and happen and be fixed etc.
No, rather that the deleterious mutations that occurred in the past used to kill people, but now they survive due to medicine, technology, and an abundance of food.
Calling J.R.R. Tolkien.
