Sanford’s work on H1N1 contradicts your claim that MA has zero connection to any reality. Beside that, when reading the way you describe Sanford, we could imagine that he is a bad scientist, dishonest moreover. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sanford is a top notch scientist as well as an honest man.
It’s amazing to see you state this after having been shown otherwise. Almost makes one believe Morton named an actual demon.
He was a good scientist. When he became a Born-Again and decided to use science to support his new YEC beliefs he became a terrible scientist. His overwhelming confirmation bias has led him to some flat out ridiculous claims. That doesn’t make him dishonest, just pegging the meter on self-delusion.
I notice you’ve dodged every question asked of you on Mendel’s Accountant this thread. Why aren’t mice extinct, why has the human population soared, have you ever actually used Mendel’s Accountant, etc. Do you ever do anything but rote regurgitate YEC nonsense with zero understanding of the subject matter?
He’s certainly been dishonest on occasion. One example is how he consistently misrepresents the results of Simonsen et al. (1998), who showed that the proportion of young people who died from H1N1 infections decreased over time. Sanford instead says this graph shows quote: decreasing “pathogenicity (i.e. fitness)” of the virus, when it shows no such thing. Here’s the original graph from Simonsen et al. (note the Y-axis label):
You charge me with zero understanding of the subject matter. Don’t you think that is a little bit too harsh ? Perhaps you could raise the rating to 1/10 or even, with a little kindness, to 1.5/10, no?
OK, I’ll rephrase. You have demonstrated zero understanding of the subject matter in your posts to date. Better?
Now how about all those questions on Mendel’s Accountant you evaded and ignored in this thread?
Not really
Yeah I saw the equation, what I mean is what is the model that predicts that genetic entropy should cause exponential decay in lifespans? It’s not clear why that would be the case even if there really is genetic entropy going on. Why exponential decay in lifespan? Why exponential? Why that magnitude of effect? Why lifespan, as opposed to reproductive success, or sprinting performance, or weightlifting, or intelligence, or increase in frequency of congenital birth defects?
None of it makes any sense. It’s meaningless retrofitting of absurd mythical ideas to genetics for apologentics purposes. How can this complete nonsense convince you even the slightest?
Do H1N1 influenza viruses also show an exponential decay in lifespan? Do the virus particles decay faster today than they did 100 years ago? What “genetic entropy” model predicts the magnitude of the effect?
How about mice? Or bacteria? Do they also live shorter lives today than they did 100 years ago?
Yes really. Especially in the running from all the questions.
Yep. Recall that influenza is a zoonotic disease, meaning that the virus made a transition from nonhuman host(s) to humans. Actually, this has happened multiple times with different influenza strains and will likely continue to happen. Recent zoonoses tend to be more virulent, and conventional wisdom about such viruses is that evolution towards reduced virulence is part of adaptation to the new host. As Chris suggests, killing hosts can have significant disadvantages for obligate parasites like viruses. Also, even just making the host very sick can reduce transmissibility because healthy potential hosts will avoid the obviously sick carrier.
Genetic Entropy results from the constant accumulation of mutations over generations, like rust in car. This mean that each generation will accumulate the same number of new mutations, which will translate to the same degree of fitness decline at each generation. IOW, fitness will decline at a rate proportional to its current value. Hence the exponential decay curve when you plot fitness against the generations.
The curve doesn’t plot fitness, it plots lifespan.
This is the point, which is truly remarkable; the curve that plots lifespan of the patriarchs appears the same than the curve that plots fitness given constant mutation rate across generations. Again, this is truly remarkable and deserve an explanation. Genetic Entropy gives one. I am waiting for an alternative.
Like or not, my post at 46 demonstrates that MA has a connection to reality and nobody has convincingly shown me otherwise.
It can’t be the point. It could only possibly be the point if the curve plotted fitness, but it doesn’t.
You claim to have a theory that predicts exponential decay in fitness due to accumulating mutations, and you consider it a sort of vindication that you can find some other biological phenomenon which you can fit an exponential decay-curve to, without having in any way explained how that other biological phenomenon is connected to fitness. Much less why countless other biological phenomena don’t exhibit exponential decays (not that longevity actually does that either).
No it isn’t, it’s perhaps halfway insane though. Sanford seems to have gone looking for any sort of “data” to which he can sorta weakly fit to an exponential decay.
the curve that plots lifespan of the patriarchs appears the same than the curve that plots fitness given constant mutation rate across generations.
… so clearly they must be related and the data must be real. HAhahahahha
Again, this is truly remarkable and deserve an explanation. Genetic Entropy gives one.
But it doesn’t do that, the explanation does not even exist for this relationship. What is the genetic contribution to longevity such that accumulating mutations would cause exponential decay in it (which by the way there isn’t any data to support)?
And why hasn’t much more evidence been found for it?
I am waiting for an alternative.
And that mindset is one of the problems. You should be waiting for much better evidence, and an actual explanation for this completely mysterious relationship you’re suggesting, instead of what seems to be “they both expontentially decay so one must cause the other change my mind”.
You mean the post where you mistakenly conflate fitness with virulence and pathogenecity?
and nobody has convincingly shown me otherwise.
By now it is clear that nothing could. You see two exponential decays and that is enough for you to believe strongly they’re connected or explained by the same underlying cause.
Did you miss my post where I pointed out that Sanford’s “longevity curve” predicts infinite ages for Noah and his ancestors, and a current human lifespan of around 20 years old?
Where in the world did you see that Sanford longevity curve predicts infinite ages for Noah and his ancestors? The curve predicts nothing.
Correct. A curve fit to fantasy made up data points about life spans predicts absolutely nothing about any human genomic degradation.
Tell us again why mice haven’t gone extinct.
If Sanford wants to claim that longevity has been decreasing according to that exponential curve that he presents, that means we can continue the curve towards and backwards in time to see what ages this exponential decay predicts. Or does the curve just apply to a very narrow window of time, and not apply to either modern people or more ancient people? That seems a bit cherry-picky to me.