Poll: Does the Theory of Evolution have practical applications?

Alan Kleinman · Feb 23, 2021

Speedwell said:
Why does it have to be birds and mammals? Some favorable mutations. More mutations will produce a favorable outcome of some kind than will produce a single favorable outcome of a specific kind.

When I play poker I realize (despite my inadequate mathematics education) that the probability of being dealt any particular hand is low. But I don't need a particular hand, all I need is a winning hand and there are many of those--one in each game, in fact.

DNA evolution and adaptation require natural selection. In the real world, there are not many winning hands. And the way lineages improve the probability of getting a winning hand is by doing a billion replications, then one of its members will get the next winning hand. Try reading this paper again and see if you can understand why you are wrong:
Darwinian Evolution Can Follow Only Very Few Mutational Paths to Fitter Proteins
From the paper:

Weinreich said:
Five point mutations in a particular b-lactamase allele jointly increase bacterial resistance to a clinically important antibiotic by a factor of ~100,000. In principle, evolution to this high resistance b-lactamase might follow any of the 120 mutational trajectories linking these alleles. However, we demonstrate that 102 trajectories are inaccessible to Darwinian selection and that many of the remaining trajectories have negligible probabilities of realization, because four of these five mutations fail to increase drug resistance in some combinations.

Any of the evolutionary trajectories that are accessible must occur by a billion replications of that particular variant at each evolutionary step. That is what is demonstrated by the Kishony experiment. And it takes 50 billion replications to get the next winning card in the Lenski experiment. So, does your version of the ToE not require natural selection?

Shemjaza · Feb 23, 2021

Alan Kleinman said:
And I don't do that.

Aren't you interested in the specific probabilities of a chain of mutations?

Alan Kleinman · Feb 23, 2021

Shemjaza said:
Aren't you interested in the specific probabilities of a chain of mutations?

The probabilities for any evolutionary trajectory are the same. The only variables are mutation rate and the number of selection pressures acting on the population. The ability of a lineage to traverse any evolutionary trajectory depends on each variant at each evolutionary step to increase in number sufficiently so that there is a reasonable probability of taking the next evolutionary step. Read the Weinreich paper that I've linked to in my response to Speedwell's post, the link is in post #622. That's how natural selection works. Now, if you think that reptiles evolve into birds and fish evolve into mammals without natural selection, you need to explain how that happens. Better yet, study the Kishony and Lenski experiments and see experimental examples of how DNA evolution actually works.

Speedwell · Feb 23, 2021

Alan Kleinman said:
The probabilities for any evolutionary trajectory are the same. The only variables are mutation rate and the number of selection pressures acting on the population. The ability of a lineage to traverse any evolutionary trajectory depends on each variant at each evolutionary step to increase in number sufficiently so that there is a reasonable probability of taking the next evolutionary step.

We agree with all that and still think your argument is wrong. Do you have any idea why? Or do you even care?

Read the Weinreich paper that I've linked to in my response to Speedwell's post, the link is in post #622. That's how natural selection works. Now, if you think that reptiles evolve into birds and fish evolve into mammals without natural selection, you need to explain how that happens. Better yet, study the Kishony and Lenski experiments and see experimental examples of how DNA evolution actually works.

Without natural selection? Where did that come from?

Shemjaza · Feb 23, 2021

Alan Kleinman said:
The probabilities for any evolutionary trajectory are the same. The only variables are mutation rate and the number of selection pressures acting on the population. The ability of a lineage to traverse any evolutionary trajectory depends on each variant at each evolutionary step to increase in number sufficiently so that there is a reasonable probability of taking the next evolutionary step. Read the Weinreich paper that I've linked to in my response to Speedwell's post, the link is in post #622. That's how natural selection works. Now, if you think that reptiles evolve into birds and fish evolve into mammals without natural selection, you need to explain how that happens. Better yet, study the Kishony and Lenski experiments and see experimental examples of how DNA evolution actually works.

Given the vast diversity of both birds and reptiles declaring that a path between such groups is a narrow and limitied seems totally illogical.

Alan Kleinman · Feb 23, 2021

Speedwell said:
We agree with all that and still think your argument is wrong. Do you have any idea why? Or do you even care?
Without natural selection? Where did that come from?

I'm here to explain how natural selection works. And it doesn't work the way you claim. You think that any sequence of bases gives a living replicator and that extinction never occurs.

Alan Kleinman · Feb 23, 2021

Shemjaza said:
Given the vast diversity of both birds and reptiles declaring that a path between such groups is a narrow and limitied seems totally illogical.

A given environment can support a diversity of variants but jumping to the conclusion that birds are simply a diversification of reptiles requires the genetic transformation of respiratory systems, circulatory systems, excretory systems, musculoskeletal systems, metabolism,... as well the evolution of feathers. How does diversification of a population do that? What kind of logical genetic transformational path can do this? It takes 50 billion replications for each step improvement in fitness for Lenski's bacteria due to competition between variants. Evolutionary experiments such as the Lenski and Kishony experiments demonstrate exactly how natural selection works. You have no logical explanation of how a reptile genome can be transformed into a bird genome. You can only demonstrate that reptiles and birds can diversify but this diversification does not alter their underlying physiology and anatomy of either reptiles or birds. And there is a price to pay for not recognizing your illogic. That price is the incorrect explanation of how drug resistance evolves and why cancer treatments fail.

Speedwell · Feb 23, 2021

Alan Kleinman said:
I'm here to explain how natural selection works. And it doesn't work the way you claim. You think that any sequence of bases gives a living replicator and that extinction never occurs.

Sorry, that's a bald-faced lie. I never said any such thing and I don't think it.

Speedwell · Feb 23, 2021

Alan Kleinman said:
A given environment can support a diversity of variants but jumping to the conclusion that birds are simply a diversification of reptiles requires the genetic transformation of respiratory systems, circulatory systems, excretory systems, musculoskeletal systems, metabolism,... as well the evolution of feathers. How does diversification of a population do that? What kind of logical genetic transformational path can do this? It takes 50 billion replications for each step improvement in fitness for Lenski's bacteria due to competition between variants. Evolutionary experiments such as the Lenski and Kishony experiments demonstrate exactly how natural selection works. You have no logical explanation of how a reptile genome can be transformed into a bird genome. You can only demonstrate that reptiles and birds can diversify but this diversification does not alter their underlying physiology and anatomy of either reptiles or birds. And there is a price to pay for not recognizing your illogic. That price is the incorrect explanation of how drug resistance evolves and why cancer treatments fail.

Oh, dear. You're not talking bout "Kinds" now, are you?

Alan Kleinman · Feb 23, 2021

Speedwell said:
Sorry, that's a bald-faced lie. I never said any such thing and I don't think it.

You certainly aren't the one explaining how natural selection works. You don't even know how to compute a probability. If you did, you could explain the Kishony and Lenski experiments.

Shemjaza · Feb 23, 2021

Alan Kleinman said:
A given environment can support a diversity of variants but jumping to the conclusion that birds are simply a diversification of reptiles requires the genetic transformation of respiratory systems, circulatory systems, excretory systems, musculoskeletal systems, metabolism,... as well the evolution of feathers. How does diversification of a population do that? What kind of logical genetic transformational path can do this? It takes 50 billion replications for each step improvement in fitness for Lenski's bacteria due to competition between variants. Evolutionary experiments such as the Lenski and Kishony experiments demonstrate exactly how natural selection works. You have no logical explanation of how a reptile genome can be transformed into a bird genome. You can only demonstrate that reptiles and birds can diversify but this diversification does not alter their underlying physiology and anatomy of either reptiles or birds. And there is a price to pay for not recognizing your illogic. That price is the incorrect explanation of how drug resistance evolves and why cancer treatments fail.

Theropod dinosaurs, archaic birds and genetic atavisms all make pretty decent evidence for the common ancestry of reptiles and birds.

Alan Kleinman · Feb 23, 2021

Speedwell said:
Oh, dear. You're not talking bout "Kinds" now, are you?

Tell us again how reptiles evolve into birds and fish evolve into mammals. Oh, that's right, you said it's just like dealing cards. Is that one of the practical applications of the ToE? No wonder we have drug-resistant infections and failed cancer treatments to deal with if this is what they are teaching math majors.

Estrid · Feb 23, 2021

Shemjaza said:
Theropod dinosaurs, archaic birds and genetic atavisms all make pretty decent evidence for the common ancestry of reptiles and birds.

Nobody could study comparative vertebrate
anatomy- like hours of lecture, study, dissection-
and honestly say they have reasonable doubt
that birds are of Archosaur descent, as are crocodiles.

Alan Kleinman · Feb 23, 2021

Shemjaza said:
Theropod dinosaurs, archaic birds and genetic atavisms all make pretty decent evidence for the common ancestry of reptiles and birds.

Really? You have evidence that theropods have the same respiratory, circulatory, excretory, musculoskeletal, metabolic systems,... as well as feathers? Explain to us the evidence you have that explains the difference in the lungs of reptiles and birds, and the different number of chambers in the heart between the two, and how birds got the loop of henle in their renal system and reptiles don't have that, and pneumatic bones and flight muscles, and feathers. What's your best evidence for this and explain how all these anatomic and physiologic differences are accomplished by genetic transformation by the accumulation of mutations, and what is the selection pressure(s) that would lead to these genetic transformations. Perhaps you want to try Speedwells argument and claim it is the same as dealing a hand from a card deck.

Before you draw your clades describing this kind of evolutionary process, you should view real genetic clades from a real experiment.
The Evolution of Bacteria on a “Mega-Plate” Petri Dish (Kishony Lab)
At the end of that video, consider those clades. There is diversification of the original founder population with multiple different lineages adapting to the selection condition. And for each of those lineages, the nodes in those clades are colonies of about a billion members. This is not a card dealing problem, this is a set of binomial probability problems where each binomial probability problem is linked to the others by the multiplication rule of probabilities. That's how drug resistance evolves, this is how Lenski's populations evolve to the starvation selection conditions, this is what all the real, measurable, and repeatable empirical examples of DNA evolution demonstrate. You need to go back and reconsider your interpretation of the fossil record because you can't explain evolutionary processes which occur at the molecular level using gross anatomy. That is like trying to explain particle physics with classical physics.

Alan Kleinman · Feb 23, 2021

Estrid said:
Nobody could study comparative vertebrate
anatomy- like hours of lecture, study, dissection-
and honestly say they have reasonable doubt
that birds are of Archosaur descent, as are crocodiles.

You can't explain evolutionary transformations which occur on a molecular level using gross anatomy. You are trying to use 19th-century science when in the 21st century, we have genetic sequencing.

Kylie · Feb 23, 2021

Estrid said:
Nobody could study comparative vertebrate
anatomy- like hours of lecture, study, dissection-
and honestly say they have reasonable doubt
that birds are of Archosaur descent, as are crocodiles.

Alan Kleinman said:
You can't explain evolutionary transformations which occur on a molecular level using gross anatomy. You are trying to use 19th-century science when in the 21st century, we have genetic sequencing.

Just like how once, no one in the world could explain how the sun stayed illuminated, thus the sun didn't exist.

Alan Kleinman · Feb 24, 2021

Kylie said:
Just like how once, no one in the world could explain how the sun stayed illuminated, thus the sun didn't exist.

If comparative anatomy is what one uses to determine relatedness, frogs and tadpoles and caterpillars and butterflies are totally unrelated. And the laws of thermodynamics say the sun won't stay illuminated forever. Use the correct science in the correct manner and your explanations and predictions will be accurate. Genetic sequencing is what determines relatedness, just ask the courts about DNA identification for paternity testing and other legal purposes. Biologists use genetic sequencing with the wrong equations based on the wrong assumptions on only tiny portions of matching parts of genomes and ignore all the rest of the genetic differences.

Estrid · Feb 24, 2021

Kylie said:
Just like how once, no one in the world could explain how the sun stayed illuminated, thus the sun didn't exist.

You ever read Lucretius? Interesting window into the
ideas Romans had about such as sound, the sun and moon,
fossils and origin of life, etc.

Frank Robert · Feb 24, 2021

Alan Kleinman said:
I can only demonstrate that they have not presented an explanation for the Kishony experiment. It's up to them to demonstrate they can present an explanation. I've taken the time to write and get peer-reviewed and published my explanation of the Kishony experiment.

You were given an opportunity to demonstrate your math to other scientists which you didn't take. Secondly, Dr. S claimed you did not demonstrate that there would be a different result with the stimulation that you suggested. I could have missed it but it does not appear that anyone was questioning your published explanation. I believe you had your reasons for leaving the discussion but you did not share them.

Frank Robert · Feb 24, 2021

Alan Kleinman said:
Go tell them to figure out the Kishony and Lenski experiment. If they have trouble with that, they can read these papers:
The basic science and mathematics of random mutation and natural selection

The Kishony Mega-Plate Experiment, a Markov Process

Fixation and Adaptation in the Lenski E. coli Long Term Evolution Experiment

You could read them as well, but without taking and understanding an introductory course in probability theory, you won't understand. ToEists aren't very good with mathematics, especially when it conflicts with their confused ideas about the physics and mathematics of evolution.

I withdrew because Swamidass wasn't very peaceful when I told him he was wrong about doubling populations doubling the probability of a beneficial mutation occurring. He thought I was trying to trick him when I was really trying to see if he understood the difference between complementary and additive events. He doesn't, I wonder if he'll ever learn?

Poll: Does the Theory of Evolution have practical applications?

Does the Theory of Evolution have practical applications?

I'm a creationist: YES, the Theory of Evolution has practical applications.

I'm a creationist: NO, the Theory of Evolution does NOT have practical applications.

I'm an evolutionist: YES, the Theory of Evolution has practical applications.

I'm an evolutionist: NO, the Theory of Evolution does NOT have practical applications.

I'm a creationist: I am unsure if the Theory of Evolution has practical applications.

I'm an evolutionist: I am unsure if the Theory of Evolution has practical applications.

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