No, that’s not true. That additional mutation is still effectively neutral because its effect is extremely small. There will be no significant difference reproductively between the individual with 9 EFNs and the one with 10 EFNs. This is like rust building up on a car. When do you decide that the car is totaled? When is that last piece of rust enough? It happens too gradually to put a single point on it.
It also means that that 90% that you claim has no function, also has nothing to do with the human body’s phenotype. It has nothing to do with our functioning as biological machines. And as such, it has nothing to do with our conversation, either. We’re talking about changes that do affect the machine.
No, not always as you have been shown ad nauseum. Only when you’re at or very close to a local fitness peak. But you love your silly little Creationist meme to death and undoubtedly will keep regurgitating it every chance you get.
Actually you’d be surprised. Not everybody here seems to be yet aware of this fact. I welcome any non-circular evidence you can provide (preferably a charted-out DFE) that shows an average positive fitness impact for effectively neutral mutations.
No, that’s quite wrong. The majority of mutations that can be tested by known means are neutral, to the best of our ability to measure fitness. Most of the others are deleterious, while others are clearly beneficial. We observe beneficial mutations all the time in the lab.
Also false.
That bears no resemblance to anything I’ve been arguing, or to real genetics.
Of course, that’s why I said it was a toy example. More deleterious mutations means more probability that some of them will be selected against. There’s no hard line, but the effect is the same.
Since when? You’ve been talking about mutations very generally this entire time.
This is misleading. In fact, to say “neutral” with no qualifier is essentially always misleading. Do you mean effectively neutral, or do you mean strictly neutral?
“All the time”? You have already agreed that the vast majority of mutations large enough to be studied or tested are deleterious. This is also what the published literature on this topic clearly states.
Based on what you’ve said previously, I think it does. What have I misunderstood? Why not pick up where our previous discussion left off? I think we were making some progress.
GE holds that the endgame is extinction due to the accumulation of effectively neutral mutations. That is pretty big selection. So here is yet another of those logical inconsistencies which is inherent in the idea even apart from the lack of evidence - the idea that there is no operating selection at all until, wham, there is some ultimate and pervasive extinction level selection.
PD knows his Genetic Entropy nonsense has been pulverized. He’s just blindly repeating his already discredited talking points to try and save a little face.
Do you think there’s a contradiction there or something? Just because beneficials are in the minority, doesn’t mean we can’t see them “all the time”. Lot of mutations happen, you know?
Empty rhetoric and semantic games are all PDPrice has. His “science” of GE was beaten into the proverbial fine pink mist so weasel words are all he has left.
I was noticing the same contradiction, and was just about to ask about it. I wonder if @PDPrice is going to respond to this meaningfully? Oh wait, look, he did respond:
