# The Argument Clinic

**URL:** <https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561>\
**Category:** Side Conversation\
**Tags:** Comments\
**Created:** [November 22, 2022, 2:16pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561 "2022-11-22T14:16:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 104

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**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2023, 9:47pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2086 "2023-10-21T21:47:37Z")

</div>

So a nonsensical post it was.

> [@colewd](#):
>
> I agree that a deleterious mutation may or may not be a null mutation. Behe was talking about deleterious mutations that were null mutations. Did you not understand this.

1. I don’t care what Behe was talking about. You made an incorrect claim that shows you fail to understand the distinction between deleterious and null mutation.

2. Behe’s references (Walsh 1995, Lynch & Walsh 1998) do not support the claims he make in the sentence you bolded.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![CrisprCAS9](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/crisprcas9/32/9145_2.png) [@CrisprCAS9](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/CrisprCAS9)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2023, 9:50pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2087 "2023-10-21T21:50:53Z")

</div>

> [@colewd](#):
>
> Behe was talking about deleterious mutations

Oh right, this was Behe lying about what his references say. Unless you think he’s flagrantly incompetent and fairly stupid.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2023, 10:01pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2088 "2023-10-21T22:01:40Z")

</div>

Bill humor me for a moment here. Try to get specific and tell me how rare or difficult it is to find a

1. Substrate binding protein able to bind some biologically relevant substrate  
and/or
2. new enzymatic function

for a protein that has been designed **only** to be able to fold?

Suppose someone designs a protein only for the purpose of it being able to fold stably into some 3-dimensional structure, in complete ignorance of whether it will be able to carry out any function.

How many such only-designed-to-be-able-to-fold proteins must be screened to find one able to bind a biologically relevant substrate?

And how many would it take to find an enzyme?

Rough estimate of a number, a fraction, please. Just the one you think is most reasonable you have read in the pro-ID literature.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![colewd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecd19e/32.png) [@colewd](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/colewd)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2023, 10:41pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2089 "2023-10-21T22:41:28Z")

</div>

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> Suppose someone designs a protein only for the purpose of it being able to fold stably into some 3-dimensional structure, in complete ignorance of whether it will be able to carry out any function.
> 
> How many such only-designed-to-be-able-to-fold proteins must be screened to find one able to bind a biologically relevant substrate?
> 
> And how many would it take to find an enzyme?
> 
> Rough estimate of a number, a fraction, please. Just the one you think is most reasonable you have read in the pro-ID literature.

Hi Rum  
The poster child in the ID literature for prokaryotic cells is the bacterial flagellum. You are well aware of this structure which Behe first surfaced in Darwins black box. Now this is more complicated than a single enzyme but it is trivial compared to some eukaryotic functions.

If you still believe and want to defend UCD you need to explain the emergence of the complex structures not the simplest. You need to show that complex sequences can come from simple ones.

As far as a unique enzyme I agree one could be found from a duplicated gene and a similar sequence but this does almost nothing to explain what you so passionately believe in.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2023, 10:42pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2090 "2023-10-21T22:42:58Z")

</div>

Bill, a number please. What number do you think is realistic? What does your reading of the pro-ID literature suggest is the fraction?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![colewd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecd19e/32.png) [@colewd](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/colewd)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2023, 10:53pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2091 "2023-10-21T22:53:07Z")

</div>

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> Bill, a number please.

The search for the bacterial flagellum would take about 2^30000 trials or more depending on unseen complications. This would need to start from an organism that has never had one.

I am sticking with the assumption of 50% amino acid substitutions generating a null allele and a combined residue count of 300000. This is less than Behe’s number of 70%.

Now this number is not close to feasible so I would assume you disagree.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2023, 11:00pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2092 "2023-10-21T23:00:07Z")

</div>

Bill why don’t you answer the question you are posed?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![CrisprCAS9](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/crisprcas9/32/9145_2.png) [@CrisprCAS9](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/CrisprCAS9)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2023, 11:12pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2093 "2023-10-21T23:12:40Z")

</div>

It’s because he doesn’t understand the question. Have you tried asking it with more waffling and word salad?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2023, 11:14pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2094 "2023-10-21T23:14:45Z")

</div>

> [@CrisprCAS9](#):
>
> It’s because he doesn’t understand the question.

Maybe.

I’m more inclined to believe it’s because he either doesn’t know and doesn’t want to admit he’s clueless, or because he’s afraid he will say something I will then demonstrate to be hilariously wrong to such a degree it will make both him and the fake authorities that have destroyed his brain look like the dishonest clowns they are.

In any case, him refusing to directly answer it is itself a revealing answer.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![AlanFox](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/alanfox/32/3495_2.png) [@AlanFox](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/AlanFox)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2023, 7:43am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2095 "2023-10-22T07:43:11Z")

</div>

> [@colewd](#):
>
> The search for the bacterial flagellum…

So great, the Archaea made their own.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![colewd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecd19e/32.png) [@colewd](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/colewd)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2023, 12:50pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2096 "2023-10-22T12:50:18Z")

</div>

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> Bill why don’t you answer the question you are posed?

I did answer it. But my answer was about 3x in the exponent too large. The flagellum to fold and bind 30 proteins will take about 2^10000 trials. Translated to the fraction 2^-10000 or 18^10000/20^10000. This is conservative as we are not including the coordinated transcription that needs to take place.

This is assuming 50% of the residues will work in each position.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2023, 2:02pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2097 "2023-10-22T14:02:27Z")

</div>

> [@colewd](#):
>
> > [@Rumraket](#):
> >
> > Bill why don’t you answer the question you are posed?
> 
> I did answer it.

No you blathered about the flagellum, because you’re afraid to answer the question.

Try to get specific and tell me how rare or difficult it is to find a

1. Substrate binding protein able to bind some biologically relevant substrate  
and/or
2. new enzymatic function

for a protein that has been designed **only** to be able to fold?

I don’t care about your irrelevant flagellum blather. Answer the question.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![colewd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecd19e/32.png) [@colewd](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/colewd)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2023, 11:22pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2098 "2023-10-22T23:22:55Z")

</div>

I agree with concept of micro evolution or functional changes inside an existing population. There is nothing to prove here.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> I don’t care about your irrelevant flagellum blather. Answer the question.

You asked for an ID test. This is one of the early poster child.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2023, 11:48pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2099 "2023-10-22T23:48:28Z")

</div>

> [@colewd](#):
>
> I agree with concept of micro evolution or functional changes inside an existing population. There is nothing to prove here.

I don’t care.

> [@colewd](#):
>
> > [@Rumraket](#):
> >
> > I don’t care about your irrelevant flagellum blather. Answer the question.
> 
> You asked for an ID test.

No. I asked the question I wrote in my post. What are you so afraid of?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![colewd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecd19e/32.png) [@colewd](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/colewd)\
**Post date:** [October 23, 2023, 12:01am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2100 "2023-10-23T00:01:03Z")

</div>

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> What are you so afraid of?

Waisting time on uninteresting discussions.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [October 23, 2023, 12:32am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2101 "2023-10-23T00:32:20Z")

</div>

> [@colewd](#):
>
> Waisting time on uninteresting discussions.

🙈 🙉

Oh btw, I find this response of yours fascinating.

> [@colewd](#):
>
> > [@Rumraket](#):
> >
> > Try to get specific and tell me how rare or difficult it is to find a
> > 
> > 1. Substrate binding protein able to bind some biologically relevant substrate  
> > and/or
> > 2. new enzymatic function
> > 
> > for a protein that has been designed **only** to be able to fold?
> 
> I agree with concept of micro evolution or functional changes inside an existing population. There is nothing to prove here.

So apparently you think a protein that can fold just has no problem evolving the ability to bind a substrate, or a new enzymatic activity. That’s just “microevolution” or “functional changes inside an existing population”! Something to be expected.

Great.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![John\_Harshman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/john_harshman/32/1121_2.png) [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)\
**Post date:** [October 23, 2023, 1:18am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2102 "2023-10-23T01:18:43Z")

</div>

> [@colewd](#):
>
> I agree with concept of micro evolution or functional changes inside an existing population.

Great. Then do you agree with concept of one population splitting into two? If so, that’s all you need for evolution to produce lots of species from one.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Roy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/roy/32/3799_2.png) [@Roy](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Roy)\
**Post date:** [October 23, 2023, 8:38am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2103 "2023-10-23T08:38:00Z")

</div>

> [@colewd](#):
>
> > [@Roy](#):
> >
> > No. Because you haven’t provided any actual numbers.
> 
> Hi Roy
> 
> I have several university courses in both calculus and statistics and my major included applied mathematics. I have also studied tensor calculus.

Did you pass any of those courses?

In order to do so, you would have to learn that it’s necessary to show your working, and that just giving the final answer isn’t enough. If it’s right it doesn’t show understanding, and if it’s wrong (as your answers invariably are) there’s no way of working out where you went wrong and correcting your error.

So you should know better than to just include previously unmentioned numbers with no derivation whatsoever, as you do here:

> [@](#):
>
> It is somewhere between 1 and 10^371 vs a denominator of 10^482. Since the latter simply gets you a successful protein fold (a sequence without a null mutation) and not a complex function that is highly resistant to mutation I would estimate that the real number is much closer to 1 then to 10^371.

Neither 10^371 nor 10^482 have appeared in this thread before. 10^482 might be a bad approximation of 20^371, and 10^371 derived from it, but since you’ve not explained where they come from, and 10^371 looks like a botched attempt to divide 20^371 by 2, the only response needed is to ☝ 😆.

You should also, if you’ve that much maths background, know the difference between fractions and rations, know how to manipulate exponents, and know to check that you haven’t [accidentally introduced extra zeros when transcribing numbers](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2091):

> [@](#):
>
> The search for the bacterial flagellum would take about 2^ **30000** trials or more depending on unseen complications. This would need to start from an organism that has never had one.
> 
> I am sticking with the assumption of 50% amino acid substitutions generating a null allele and a combined residue count of **300000**.

That much background should also help you avoid errors that a ten-year old wouldn’t make, such as [not being able to correctly subtract 3-digit numbers](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/do-all-deer-share-a-common-ancestor/16040/546), or [this gem](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2096):

> [@](#):
>
> I did answer it. But my answer was about 3x in the exponent too large. The flagellum to fold and bind 30 proteins will take about 2^10000 trials. Translated to the fraction 2^-10000 or 18^10000/20^10000.

2^-10000 is not the same as 18^10000/20^10000. It’s not even close.

2^-10000 is approximately 5e-3011. 18^10000/20^10000 is approximately 3e-458\[1\].

**You’re off by more than 2500 orders of magnitude** - which may be a new world record.\[2\]

* * *

1. Evaluated as (18/20)^10000 to avoid calculator overflow. 

2. I know that technically that 2^30000 and 2^10000 are more than 6000 orders of magnitude different, but really the error there is only in the exponent.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Roy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/roy/32/3799_2.png) [@Roy](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Roy)\
**Post date:** [October 23, 2023, 8:39am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2104 "2023-10-23T08:39:07Z")

</div>

P.S. Since you asked:

> [@](#):
>
> What type of mathematics have you studied?

Quite a lot. Especially probability and number theory. But it’s not relevant, because high-school maths is all that’s needed to spot your errors.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Roy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/roy/32/3799_2.png) [@Roy](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Roy)\
**Post date:** [October 23, 2023, 8:51am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-argument-clinic/15561/2105 "2023-10-23T08:51:57Z")

</div>

A demonstration of why you should never expect a straight answer from @colewd:

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> Rough estimate of a number, a fraction, please.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> Bill, a number please. What number do you think is realistic?

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> Bill why don’t you answer the question you are posed?

> [@colewd](#):
>
> You asked for an ID test.

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