Creationists: Explain your understanding of microevolution and macroevolution

[Alan Kleinman]

This literally does not answer my question: Do the assumptions in that model match the reality of human or other ape populations? If not, why should we give it any credence.

Absolutely they do match. DNA microevolution depends on population size (number of replications) whether you are talking about bacteria, humans, apes, or any other replicator. It also depends on the mutation rate and the number of selection conditions acting on the population. Those are the variables that determine whether adaptive evolution can or cannot occur. That's why the 1 billion people that existed before 10,000 years ago can get a sickle cell mutation or a lactase persistence mutation but lack the population size necessary to get variants that have multiple adaptive mutations.

 

[Hans Blaster]

So you think that a genome from a replicator that has gone extinct is more ordered than the genome from a replicator that doesn't go extinct?

Are you claiming the "order" of the genome is a cause for extinction or is explanatory of which populations go extinct and which don't? (That's what the post I was replying to clearly implies.)

 

[Alan Kleinman]

Are you claiming the "order" of the genome is a cause for extinction or is explanatory of which populations go extinct and which don't? (That's what the post I was replying to clearly implies.)

No, the measure of order for a genome is the reproductive fitness of that replicator. That order is dependent on the environment with its selection conditions. Reducing the order of the genome reduces the reproductive fitness of that variant and if the order is reduced sufficiently (disordered) that replicator will no longer be able to replicate. It is the selection conditions that kill or impair the ability of the replicator to replicate, order is the measure of that ability.

Think of this in the context of the Lenski experiment. Starvation is the selection pressure on the bacteria. The most efficient users of the limited glucose take over the population and get fixed. These variants at that stage for the given environment have the most ordered genome until one of the descendants gets another adaptive mutation which increases the reproductive fitness of that variant. It is the more ordered variant in the population that ultimately causes the starvation of the less fit (less ordered) variants for the given environment.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Like I said, various biologists have not applied the laws of thermodynamics to biological evolution correctly. This explains why biologists have so much difficulty in correctly doing the mathematics of microevolution. You can explain conservation principles which are just like balancing a checkbook and they just don't get it.

But neither have you. Why do you expect them to do that when you can't? And again why?

 

[Hans Blaster]

No, the measure of order for a genome is the reproductive fitness of that replicator. That order is dependent on the environment with its selection conditions. Reducing the order of the genome reduces the reproductive fitness of that variant and if the order is reduced sufficiently (disordered) that replicator will no longer be able to replicate. It is the selection conditions that kill or impair the ability of the replicator to replicate, order is the measure of that ability.

Think of this in the context of the Lenski experiment. Starvation is the selection pressure on the bacteria. The most efficient users of the limited glucose take over the population and get fixed. These variants at that stage for the given environment have the most ordered genome until one of the descendants gets another adaptive mutation which increases the reproductive fitness of that variant. It is the more ordered variant in the population that ultimately causes the starvation of the less fit (less ordered) variants for the given environment.

No. Really. No.

You can compute a measure of order for a genome, but this notion that a order=fitness is something you have to demonstrate, not just assert. This reeks of the creationist, pseudo-science notion that only "decay" mutations can impact the "order" of a genome.

 

[Alan Kleinman]

No. Really. No.

You can compute a measure of order for a genome, but this notion that a order=fitness is something you have to demonstrate, not just assert. This reeks of the creationist, pseudo-science notion that only "decay" mutations can impact the "order" of a genome.

How do you compute order in a genome? What is your measure?

Most mutations are detrimental or neutral, this is clearly demonstrated in the Lenski experiment wherein 30 years of replications at about 500,000,000 replications/day his lineages accumulated about 100 adaptive mutations and a smaller number of hitchhiking neutral mutations. That occurs in a genome about 5 million bases long. The only thing that kept the genomes in his populations from going to completely random sequences (maximum disorder, minimum information) is natural selection which is selecting for the most fit variants. That is physically what is happening in this biological evolution experiment.

And we are still waiting for you believers in macroevolution to give us the mathematical explanation for the Lenski experiment. Apparently, the physics and mathematics are too difficult for you.

 

[Hans Blaster]

How do you compute order in a genome? What is your measure?

I don't know. That's one of those "info theory" things that I'm rather skeptical of. I'm only responding to your invocation of order/disorder in genomes.

Most mutations are detrimental or neutral, this is clearly demonstrated in the Lenski experiment wherein 30 years of replications at about 500,000,000 replications/day his lineages accumulated about 100 adaptive mutations and a smaller number of hitchhiking neutral mutations. That occurs in a genome about 5 million bases long. The only thing that kept the genomes in his populations from going to completely random sequences (maximum disorder, minimum information) is natural selection which is selecting for the most fit variants. That is physically what is happening in this biological evolution experiment.

Is this how you get your numbers on the adaptive mutation rate you gave for humans?

And we are still waiting for you believers in macroevolution to give us the mathematical explanation for the Lenski experiment.

I'm not a "believer". This thread is about what creationist think micro/macro evolution are. I've never been a creationist.

Apparently, the physics and mathematics are too difficult for you.

I am not convinced that the physics analogies you and others have used are appropriate. As for the math, I thought the math in your drug resistance paper was fairly simple and I was kind of surprised it was considered novel enough to publish.

 

[Frank Robert]

And we are still waiting for you believers in macroevolution to give us the mathematical explanation for the Lenski experiment. Apparently, the physics and mathematics are too difficult for you.

I just looked through some comments on your from your discussion on Peaceful Science and you are simply regurgitating over and over "Alam Klinman is right, everyone else is wrong including all the experts." There are numerous instances here, Peaceful science and elsewhere of knowledgeable scientists and laymen giving you the courtesy of their time to listen to your same arguments and pointing out your errors along with your lack of understanding of evolutionary theory.

 

[Alan Kleinman]

I don't know. That's one of those "info theory" things that I'm rather skeptical of. I'm only responding to your invocation of order/disorder in genomes.

Order (information) has to be measured by some physical quantity. Simply sequencing the genome doesn't give that "information". Something has to be measured in order to determine if there is any relationship between the genetic sequence and the environment. That measurement is the ability of different genetic sequences to be replicated in the given environment. Think of it in terms of what genetic sequences can be communicated to future generations.

Is this how you get your numbers on the adaptive mutation rate you gave for humans?

The mathematics is essentially the same for humans and bacteria. The differences are that you have to take into account ploidy (2 genome replications per human replication) and recombination which has only a marginal effect on adaptive evolution (recombination without error cannot create new alleles).

I'm not a "believer". This thread is about what creationist think micro/macro evolution are. I've never been a creationist.

So you think that reptiles evolve into birds and fish evolve into mammals? Do you want to give a scientific (mathematical) explanation of how that happens? So far, you haven't been able to give an explanation of the simplest microevolutionary adaptation experiments. My papers give accurate mathematical simulation and prediction of both the Kishony and Lenski experiments. In fact, my first paper which was published before Kishony ran his experiment showed that it would take a billion replications for each adaptive evolutionary step. My second paper which addresses multiple simultaneous selection pressures explains why Kishony hasn't been able to get his experiment to work with two drugs and what he will have to do to get his experiment to work under those conditions.

I am not convinced that the physics analogies you and others have used are appropriate. As for the math, I thought the math in your drug resistance paper was fairly simple and I was kind of surprised it was considered novel enough to publish.

The math is quite simple. Adaptive microevolution simply consists of nested binomial probability problems where each of the probability problems are linked to the others by the multiplication rule. The random trial for these binomial probability problems is the replication and the possible outcomes are does the adaptive mutation occur, or does the adaptive mutation not occur. It is a highly asymmetric coin toss problem. The reason why these papers got published is that I correctly correlated the mathematics with empirical examples.

DNA microevolution can also be modeled as a Markov Process (a random walk). This approach gives the same results as the nested binomial probability model.

 

[Alan Kleinman]

I just looked through some comments on your from your discussion on Peaceful Science and you are simply regurgitating over and over "Alam Klinman is right, everyone else is wrong including all the experts." There are numerous instances here, Peaceful science and elsewhere of knowledgeable scientists and laymen giving you the courtesy of their time to listen to your same arguments and pointing out your errors along with your lack of understanding of evolutionary theory.

Frank Robert is now going to give the correct mathematical explanation of the Kishony and Lenski experiments. You know what will freeze over before that happens.

 

[Phred]

You are such a bore!

Yeah, I'm a bore. "Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony."

 

[Phred]

Did he ever tell us the difference between microevolution and macroevolution or is he really just a creationist without a cause?

 

[Hans Blaster]

Order (information) has to be measured by some physical quantity. Simply sequencing the genome doesn't give that "information". Something has to be measured in order to determine if there is any relationship between the genetic sequence and the environment. That measurement is the ability of different genetic sequences to be replicated in the given environment. Think of it in terms of what genetic sequences can be communicated to future generations.

Barring new mutations, the whole genome is replicated in the next generation.

Again, this is at best a definition or measure of "fitness", though not expressed in a quantitative fashion.

And again, you clearly equate order with information. What attempts to make that inference I've seen before have not done so based on some measure of fitness, but rather the sequence itself, perhaps limited to coding portions of the genome, quantifying how much "information" is contained within the genome.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Did he ever tell us the difference between microevolution and macroevolution or is he really just a creationist without a cause?

I'm pretty sure he has at least inferred that microevolution is the one that his model perfectly describes and macroevolution is the stuff that the same model clearly disproves.

 

[Alan Kleinman]

Yeah, I'm a bore. "Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony Lenski and Kishony."

You can't even do that math, it is (Kishony and Lenski)^n

 

[Alan Kleinman]

I'm pretty sure he has at least inferred that microevolution is the one that his model perfectly describes and macroevolution is the stuff that the same model clearly disproves.

Not quite, microevolutionary adaptive steps don't add up, they are linked by the multiplication rule. That's why it takes a billion replications for each adaptive evolutionary step in the Kishony experiment. It is also the reason why combination therapy works for the treatment of HIV.

 

[Hans Blaster]

So you think that reptiles evolve into birds

Specifically sauropod dinosaurs, yes, that is what the evidence shows.

and fish evolve into mammals?

Through general quadrapeds and reptiles first, but yes, I do.

Do you want to give a scientific (mathematical) explanation of how that happens?

There are whole books by actual experts that give the scientific explanations for these transitions. Biology is not my field, so I could only give an explanation that you have likely heard and seem poised to reject a priori.

So far, you haven't been able to give an explanation of the simplest microevolutionary adaptation experiments. My papers give accurate mathematical simulation and prediction of both the Kishony and Lenski experiments.

Actually, I haven't tried to explain them. That's not my purpose here, nor the topic of the thread.

Perhaps your model fits those experiments. I don't know as I haven't looked at the comparison of the model to data and it probably wouldn't be fruitful as I am not familiar with the data anyway.

 

[Phred]

You can't even do that math, it is (Kishony and Lenski)^n

It's not either, they are completely separate experiments. The order isn't important.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Not quite, microevolutionary adaptive steps don't add up, they are linked by the multiplication rule. That's why it takes a billion replications for each adaptive evolutionary step in the Kishony experiment. It is also the reason why combination therapy works for the treatment of HIV.

Do you not claim that your model makes macroevolution impossible?

 

[Hans Blaster]

It's not either, they are completely separate experiments. The order isn't important.

I'm sure they have "joint probability" though.