Side Comments on Kondrashov’s Paradox

[Dan_Eastwood]

Making my comments here for other to consider in their own replies.

@UncensoredPilgrims

It would seem that for me to continue on this thread after this response would be to beat a dead horse, because Dr. Hancock has now made public statements that amount to concessions on every single point that was under debate. I will demonstrate each of these now.

AND

@talkpopgen

However, the debate topic was “Are mutational effects a problem for evolution?” When he contacted me to request the debate, he did not say “I’d like to debate your paper” or “can you defend your paper”, but requested a broad debate about genetic entropy. In addition, he requested to be in the affirmative.

It would seem Paul’s goals are entirely different from Zach’s. Zach is refuting GE. Paul is now claiming to be refuting Zach Hancock.

Without going into details, Zach offered a detailed and nuanced reply, which Paul is re-interpreting as concession. Declare victory and retreat?

@UncensoredPilgrims

Felsenstein’s number is nowhere near 7 billion - it’s 2.7 billion.

Those are both very large populations (for eukaryotes), and of the same magnitude. Does this difference really matter?

@UncensoredPilgrims

Retroactively, Hancock is now attempting to create a false distinction between Sanford and Kondrashov that he should have known all along never existed. Sanford quoted liberally from Kondrashov in his book, and made it clear that Kondrashov’s Paradox was a big part of what he was calling “genetic entropy”.

Yet we keep seeing cases (most recently from @Nesslig20 just above) where Sanford could have been more cleat in his terms. “Mutation-free” was the one I noted above. Words do matter.

@UncensoredPilgrims

During the crossexam, at around timestamp 53:18, I asked Dr. Hancock if he agreed with Lynch’s statement. His response:

“Yes, of course.”

I’m unsure if he realized this contradicted his earlier statements, but in any case this was a concession on point number 3.

This isn’t even a criticism of Zach - it’s just the nature of scientific conclusions that they may always be refined to a better conclusion.

Paul is trying to make the case that refuting Zach is supporting GE. No, supporting GE means supporting GE. As of the last time I checked, we have yet to go extinct 100 times over.