CHALLENGE!

[PsychoSarah]

Opps, I bolded the wrong part of his post. I meant to bold when he said, "for mutations to be truly random, all mutations would have to be equally likely"

that was the part of his post that I was addressing with my post about randomness...

sorry about the miscommunication. Perhaps in a longwinded way I'm agreeing with him... but I meant to say that randomness does not necessarily mean all processes are equally likely to occur. You can still have randomness with some processes having a greater frequency of occurrence than other processes. That is what i Meant to say...

1. I am female.
2. I am using the statistical meaning of "random": of or characterizing a process of selection in which each item of a set has an equal probability of being chosen.

Random does have a few different academic definitions, so I apologize for not distinguishing which one I was using.

 

[tas8831]

That about the depth of rebuttal possible.

Why is there no such thing as random data in computers?

There is no such thing as a Random Number Generator (RNG)

Is quantum mechanics really random? Is it possible that there are ...

Does random mean that there is no pattern?

Can a computer generate a truly random number? - MIT School of ..

100% irrelevant to the OP/thread topic:

"We may add one more difference between a mutated allele and one introduced by hybridization. The mutated allele has been altered randomly, whereas the one introduced by hybridization has been shaped by natural selection, albeit in a differentiated genome (deleterious mutations have been purged and any beneficial mutations gone to fixation by selection). Intuitively, I would therefore think that an allele introduced by hybridization on average is more likely to do something good for the organism it enters than a mutated one."

And answer this simple question:

Does the provided quote mean that mating/hybridization creates new alleles? Yes/No

 

[SkyWriting]

100% irrelevant to the OP/thread topic:

"We may add one more difference between a mutated allele and one introduced by hybridization. The mutated allele has been altered randomly, whereas the one introduced by hybridization has been shaped by natural selection, albeit in a differentiated genome (deleterious mutations have been purged and any beneficial mutations gone to fixation by selection). Intuitively, I would therefore think that an allele introduced by hybridization on average is more likely to do something good for the organism it enters than a mutated one."

And answer this simple question:

Does the provided quote mean that mating/hybridization creates new alleles? Yes/No

Becasue all changes are planned and designed by God, then there is nothing new under the sun. No, there are no new alleles, just different ones as planned.

 

[SkyWriting]

That's not what random means at all. Random is a description of the method by which something comes to be or an event happens, it has nothing to do with whether or not the outcome is meaningful to anyone.

The label random is simply a description of events
that we are unable to determine what the cause is
or can predict when they will happen.

It is a label based strictly on ignorance of facts.
When something is called "Random" it means
we can't figure out the cause. Not that there
is no cause.

I find my formatting easier to read.
Likely it sucks on phones. Oh well.
You are the second person to protest my formatting.

You may have noticed that newspapers
have columns? It makes it easier to read.
I also avoid colored text. It is always
harder to read than black on white.

 

[tas8831]

Becasue all changes are planned and designed by God,

Question begging.

No, there are no new alleles, just different ones as planned.

Nonsense. Not even evidence-free nonsense, but actually counterfactual nonsense.

Bye.

 

[SkyWriting]

Question begging.

Nonsense. Not even evidence-free nonsense, but actually counterfactual nonsense.

Bye.

Oh.. I thought you were asking other people for input.
I didn't realize you had planned my response.

 

[tas8831]

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Yes, of course it does.

What came first the chicken or the egg. (more on this later)

Egg.

Nothing on the OP still?

 

[tas8831]

Oh.. I thought you were asking other people for input.
I didn't realize you had planned my response.

I had no plan, I fully expected your response to be off topic. Unable to actually address the OP, you just spammed out of desperation, hoping to cloud the issue. A common creationist tactic.

 

[SkyWriting]

I had no plan, I fully expected your response to be off topic. Unable to actually address the OP, you just spammed out of desperation, hoping to cloud the issue. A common creationist tactic.

So.... not really worth commenting on then.
But due to the low interest in your OP, you
are desperate for somebody to talk at.

 

[tas8831]

So.... not really worth commenting on then.
But due to the low interest in your OP, you
are desperate for somebody to talk at.

Aw, that makes me sad.

 

[tas8831]

Aw, that makes me sad.

If I were a creationist, I suppose I would report you for goading... But I am a grown up.

 

[PsychoSarah]

The label random is simply a description of events
that we are unable to determine what the cause is
or can predict when they will happen.

That's not entirely correct; there are multiple different academic definitions of "random", but events with relatively random outcomes may not, in and of themselves, occur randomly. For example, the winning numbers for a lottery are fairly random, but when and where the lottery takes place is not.

Notice how we completely understand not only how the non-random aspects of a lottery take place, but also how the "random" winning numbers are determined? I don't know why you think random outcomes need random, unknowable causes.

Not only that, but viruses have such small genomes that the mutations they experience tend to be repetitive and predictable, which is why vaccines for the flu can be made before the year's strains even exist with decent effectiveness. Plus, the causes of mutations are well known and can be replicated in lab despite the fact that the act of human intervention doesn't necessarily make the mutations more predictable.

It is a label based strictly on ignorance of facts.
When something is called "Random" it means
we can't figure out the cause. Not that there
is no cause.

Not my fault you apparently don't understand what random means both academically and colloquially. Because I can't find a single definition of random commonly in use that actually matches yours. And since when does anyone claim that any event, random or not, is without a cause? I certainly never said mutations lacked a cause. Are you assuming that causes have to have some intelligent intent behind them? Because they don't.

I find my formatting easier to read.
Likely it sucks on phones. Oh well.
You are the second person to protest my formatting.

I'm not protesting it, I just asked why you are doing it. Also, I am on a laptop, not a phone.

You may have noticed that newspapers
have columns? It makes it easier to read.
I also avoid colored text. It is always
harder to read than black on white.

I agree with the colored text thing, especially when people use bright colors or reds/pinks. It's terrible.

But, newspapers don't have columns because they are easier to read. It's a means by which to save space; in fact, the columns generally make them harder to read on account of awkward spacing of punctuation. Google before you make claims like that, it takes all of 5 minutes or less to find this crap out.

 

[SkyWriting]

But, newspapers don't have columns because they are easier to read. It's a means by which to save space; in fact, the columns generally make them harder to read on account of awkward spacing of punctuation. Google before you make claims like that, it takes all of 5 minutes or less to find this crap out.

Nope. Columns are used to speed reading.
People grab about 5 words at a time visually
in the shape of a Google context ad. Kind of
an oval 3 inches long of 5-10 words and two lines.

Check out Google ads. They don't make $200,000
per employee by writings novels. And they can
format their ads any way they choose. You can
count on a period at the end of a sentence.
It's placement is hardly awkward.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Nope. Columns are used to speed reading.
People grab about 5 words at a time visually
in the shape of a Google context ad. Kind of
an oval 3 inches long of 5-10 words and two lines.

Check out Google ads. They don't make $200,000
per employee by writings novels. And they can
format their ads any way they choose. You can
count on a period at the end of a sentence.
It's placement is hardly awkward.

I looked through more sources: while some agree with you, the ones that do specify that the font size typically used with newspapers (8-10) contributes to helping with reading, but all mention optimizing space used.

So it makes reading easier if the font you use is small, and they use the small font to save space. These things are not relevant to your posts, which are in a much larger font, and it isn't considered a relevant strategy for online news outlets (which is why they generally don't split text into columns the same way newspapers do, usually opting for 1 or 2 columns at most).

In short, you are basing your post formatting on a technique that doesn't even apply well to the media type of your posts.

 

[SkyWriting]

I looked through more sources: while some agree with you, the ones that do specify that the font size typically used with newspapers (8-10) contributes to helping with reading, but all mention optimizing space used.

So it makes reading easier if the font you use is small, and they use the small font to save space. These things are not relevant to your posts, which are in a much larger font, and it isn't considered a relevant strategy for online news outlets (which is why they generally don't split text into columns the same way newspapers do, usually opting for 1 or 2 columns at most).

In short, you are basing your post formatting on a technique that doesn't even apply well to the media type of your posts.

I'm also a book publisher so I value your input.

 

[Tanj]

-_- I've mentioned before that mutations are not truly random by virtue of the fact that some sequences are more prone to mutating than others

And some mutations are more common than others.

Which is why we use the term stochastic.

How's the fishies doing?