Incorrect Assumptions of Past Similarities

[Sanoy]

"almost all mutations are neutral, then deleterious and only then beneficial."

So there have been some objections over this statement, which I think are correct but I'm not sure they change anything. The first objection is that most mutations are neutral to fitness, I think that's true, but it means most mutations are not selectable and simply accumulate. I think that's true. But if the model above is correct, they will more likely be a deleterious mutation. And since it accumulates without the removal of selection when it finally reaches critical mass it's going to do so in a large population of that species. So it seems like for every advantage that has accumulated there should be a handful more disadvantages that accumulate at the same time across the species. I understand how something can climb in a generation if it's the only creature climbing while the other creatures are dying, but how does a species climb when it's entire population has been accumulating these deleterious mutations because they are not yet selectable.

 

[DogmaHunter]

So there have been some objections over this statement, which I think are correct but I'm not sure they change anything. The first objection is that most mutations are neutral to fitness, I think that's true, but it means most mutations are not selectable and simply accumulate.

And through this accumulation, they form -by prediction- a nested hierarchy wich can be verified and used as evidence for common ancestry.

I think that's true. But if the model above is correct, they will more likely be a deleterious mutation. And since it accumulates without the removal of selection when it finally reaches critical mass it's going to do so in a large population of that species. So it seems like for every advantage that has accumulated there should be a handful more disadvantages that accumulate at the same time across the species.

That makes no sense. If it's disadvantages then:
- they are not neutral
- will be weeded out by natural selection and thus NOT accumulate.

I understand how something can climb in a generation if it's the only creature climbing while the other creatures are dying, but how does a species climb when it's entire population has been accumulating these deleterious mutations because they are not yet selectable.

Indidividual neutral mutations themselves are not subject to selection pressures, that's true. But the creature that has them IS subject to selection pressures.

So neutral mutations piggy-back on positive selection pressures.

To illustrate simplisticly:
Suppose a new born has 50 mutations. 1 is beneficial. The other 49 are neutral.
Let's say the 1 beneficial mutation gives it an overall advantage over its peers. So selection favours this creature because of that 1 mutation.
That creature passes on its genes. Which includes the one mutation and also the other 49.

 

[Bugeyedcreepy]

"almost all mutations are neutral, then deleterious and only then beneficial."

So there have been some objections over this statement, which I think are correct but I'm not sure they change anything. The first objection is that most mutations are neutral to fitness, I think that's true, but it means most mutations are not selectable and simply accumulate. I think that's true.

Yep! This is how we can assess the distance to divergence between species.

But if the model above is correct, they will more likely be a deleterious mutation. And since it accumulates without the removal of selection when it finally reaches critical mass it's going to do so in a large population of that species. So it seems like for every advantage that has accumulated there should be a handful more disadvantages that accumulate at the same time across the species. I understand how something can climb in a generation if it's the only creature climbing while the other creatures are dying, but how does a species climb when it's entire population has been accumulating these deleterious mutations because they are not yet selectable.

Well, No, if it's deleterious, that means it's likely to be deleted - it's even in the name! By comparison, even the lesser occurring advantageous mutation has an unfair advantage and as a result, is more likely to be spread to fixation, and sooner at that.

**EDIT: Ahh, Good one @DogmaHunter , you beat me to it!

 

[Sanoy]

And through this accumulation, they form -by prediction- a nested hierarchy wich can be verified and used as evidence for common ancestry.




That makes no sense. If it's disadvantages then:
- they are not neutral
- will be weeded out by natural selection and thus NOT accumulate.



Indidividual neutral mutations themselves are not subject to selection pressures, that's true. But the creature that has them IS subject to selection pressures.

So neutral mutations piggy-back on positive selection pressures.

To illustrate simplisticly:
Suppose a new born has 50 mutations. 1 is beneficial. The other 49 are neutral.
Let's say the 1 beneficial mutation gives it an overall advantage over its peers. So selection favours this creature because of that 1 mutation.
That creature passes on its genes. Which includes the one mutation and also the other 49.

I think you might be a bit reactionary here. I said nothing about hierarchy or common ancestry.

It's not disadvantageous in the accumulation phase, so there is no selection to ''weed it out' before it reaches critical mass. It would thus propogate throughout the species until the point where it reaches critical mass in much of the species over time. And for each point of critical mass in the species there should be far more deleterious mutations than advantageous ones.

The short version is that it doesn't help that mutation can accumulate apart from selection where it can propagate throughout the species.

 

[Sanoy]

Yep! This is how we can assess the distance to divergence between species.

Well, No, if it's deleterious, that means it's likely to be deleted - it's even in the name! By comparison, even the lesser occurring advantageous mutation has an unfair advantage and as a result, is more likely to be spread to fixation, and sooner at that.

**EDIT: Ahh, Good one @DogmaHunter , you beat me to it!

It's not deleterious while it's accumulating, meanwhile it is propagating.

 

[Bugeyedcreepy]

It's not deleterious while it's accumulating, meanwhile it is propagating.

Are you saying deleterious mutations aren't deleterious? doesn't make sense, does it?

 

[Sanoy]

Are you saying deleterious mutations aren't deleterious? doesn't make sense, does it?

I think you missed what this is all about. A set of mutations that will be deleterious does not always begin as a deleterious set of mutations. They accumlate with no selectable value until the set is complete.

 

[tas8831]

Standard reply to those in the bubble that always seem to fail to support their bald faced claims.

I have refuted your uninformed tripe dozens of times, and you just keep re-asserting the same nonsense over and over - and have apparently been doing so for years on this forum. I explained yesterday that I am not going to keep wasting time re-refuting your repetitive nonsense. Too much effort for such little return - you are ineducable, a Dunning-Kruger Effect exemplar.

But since I am so wrong, surely it will be just as easy for you to prove that phylogenetics is premised on accumulated beneficial mutations as it was for you to prove that mutations do not produce alleles and that mating creates new alleles.

 

[Bugeyedcreepy]

I think you missed what this is all about. A set of mutations that will be deleterious does not always begin as a deleterious set of mutations. They accumlate with no selectable value until the set is complete.

....what?? Are they deleterious, or not? If not, then they aren't deleterious mutations, are they. If as you say, they start out as something else, then "become" deleterious, then that's when they tend to delete themselves, right?

In short, Deleterious mutations (a set, or otherwise) do indeed tend to delete themselves, not sure how you get around that. Neutral mutations accumulate as neutral mutations, regardless of what they might be later on.

 

[tas8831]

No, you said evolution teaches simple to complex and we all must believe it. Notice how, when I show that not to be the case, you head off down a different tack so you don't have to admit you got it wrong? Again?

Well, he still says no new alleles via mutation, and that Asian + African gives us Afro-Asian, but cannot tell us where Asian or African came from in the first place.
He also still claims that mutations do not create alleles despite one of the papers he keeps citing says the opposite.

These people are something else.

 

[Bugeyedcreepy]

I think you missed what this is all about. A set of mutations that will be deleterious does not always begin as a deleterious set of mutations. They accumlate with no selectable value until the set is complete.

....what?? Are they deleterious, or not? If not, then they aren't deleterious mutations, are they. If as you say, they start out as something else, then "become" deleterious, then that's when they tend to delete themselves, right?

In short, Deleterious mutations (a set, or otherwise) do indeed tend to delete themselves, not sure how you get around that. Neutral mutations accumulate as neutral mutations, regardless of what they might be later on.

Oh, Wait! I think I see what you mean now...

Mutations can be anything from the get-go, they don't have to "progress" through stages to be beneficial - i.e. a mutation can be beneficial right up front. same with deleterious mutations.

Apologies for my misunderstanding what you were saying there...

 

[tas8831]

And through this accumulation, they form -by prediction- a nested hierarchy wich can be verified and used as evidence for common ancestry.

When I was doing molecular phylogenetics research, we actually preferred to sequence regions like pseudogenes and noncoding DNA BECAUSE of the larger relative number of mutations one can find there (providing more raw data to analyze) - we did not care one bit about the nature of the mutations, for that is generally irrelevant for 'pure' phylogentics.*

Some years ago, I think it might have been Paul Nelson, who wrote an essay trying to diminish the relevance of such studies because they do not explain in great detail which mutations are beneficial, what they do, etc. So, since the 'professional' creationists either do not understand or willfully misrepresent such things, I suppose we should not be surprised when the Dunning-Kruger crowd does it, too.



*this was at the time that more automated sequencing tech was a new thing, and relatively expensive - my first sequencing experiments were actually run on meter-long PA gels using radiolabeled nucleotides, getting maybe 3-500 reliable bases per 12-hour run...

 

[Justatruthseeker]

"almost all mutations are neutral, then deleterious and only then beneficial."

So there have been some objections over this statement, which I think are correct but I'm not sure they change anything. The first objection is that most mutations are neutral to fitness, I think that's true, but it means most mutations are not selectable and simply accumulate. I think that's true. But if the model above is correct, they will more likely be a deleterious mutation. And since it accumulates without the removal of selection when it finally reaches critical mass it's going to do so in a large population of that species. So it seems like for every advantage that has accumulated there should be a handful more disadvantages that accumulate at the same time across the species. I understand how something can climb in a generation if it's the only creature climbing while the other creatures are dying, but how does a species climb when it's entire population has been accumulating these deleterious mutations because they are not yet selectable.

By ignoring it.....

Even if the neutral mutations accumulate without affecting the creature in the short term, as you say sooner or later they would reach critical mass and render large portions of the genome non-functional at best, or make them go extinct.

And as we have already found a significant portion of the human genome has been highly degraded due to mutations. But what I can’t get them to admit, because the truth bothers them, if it is highly degraded now, then it once was less so, or even more functional than it is now. Hence new races arose from the original pair when they do not do so now. The original genome was more robust then currently. Our genes haven’t evolved, they have been damaged over time by mutation.

 

[Bugeyedcreepy]

By ignoring it.....

Even if the neutral mutations accumulate without affecting the creature in the short term, as you say sooner or later they would reach critical mass and render large portions of the genome non-functional at best, or make them go extinct.

We have great swathes of 'junk' DNA already, so that's bunk...

And as we have already found a significant portion of the human genome has been highly degraded due to mutations. But what I can’t get them to admit, because the truth bothers them, if it is highly degraded now, then it once was less so, or even more functional than it is now. Hence new races arose from the original pair when they do not do so now. The original genome was more robust then currently. Our genes haven’t evolved, they have been damaged over time by mutation.

Bald assertions without foundation... good one.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

We have great swathes of 'junk' DNA already, so that's bunk...

And that’s how those great swathes got there...

Bald assertions without foundation... good one.

Except you just admitted you are aware of that highly degraded swathes of DNA..... so apparently you understand despite your protest it is founded.......

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC544929/

https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351

But go ahead, keep admitting the truth in one paragraph and then denying it in the next. Your contradiction merely supports my assertion....

 

[Bugeyedcreepy]

And that’s how those great swathes got there...

and we're still here, along with pretty much every other living form on the planet despite your claim of degenerate DNA (with maybe the exception of the puffer fish & like...)...

Except you just admitted you are aware of that highly degraded swathes of DNA..... so apparently you understand despite your protest it is founded.......

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC544929/

https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351

But go ahead, keep admitting the truth in one paragraph and then denying it in the next. Your contradiction merely supports my assertion....

Life has been here for billions of years, diverging into all the forms we see today - how long do you think it takes for our DNA to degenerate?? something here doesn't match up, we can trace all our DNA back through these divergences and we're still doing great!

 

[Justatruthseeker]

I think you might be a bit reactionary here. I said nothing about hierarchy or common ancestry.

It's not disadvantageous in the accumulation phase, so there is no selection to ''weed it out' before it reaches critical mass. It would thus propogate throughout the species until the point where it reaches critical mass in much of the species over time. And for each point of critical mass in the species there should be far more deleterious mutations than advantageous ones.

The short version is that it doesn't help that mutation can accumulate apart from selection where it can propagate throughout the species.

But they don’t want to hear that even when they admit they are not selected for or against by natural selection. In their minds once it reaches critical mass in the entire population it invariably means a beneficial mutation, even if far more rare then deleterious mutations.

Far easier for them to just ignore reality. That once it reaches critical mass the entire population simply slowly goes extinct..... as they can no longer produce healthy offspring. Best case scenario as stated it renders a large swath of DNA useless and reduces genetic diversity that once existed.....

 

[Justatruthseeker]

and we're still here, along with pretty much every other living form on the planet despite your claim of degenerate DNA (with maybe the exception of the puffer fish & like...)...

Life has been here for billions of years, diverging into all the forms we see today - how long do you think it takes for our DNA to degenerate?? something here doesn't match up, we can trace all our DNA back through these divergences and we're still doing great!

So you all claim...... but yet real scientists admit that hereditary tests to trace ancestry is a scam, that all it can really tell you is where that genome type exists today.

This is because any mutation or change to the genome makes tracing it backwards impossible before the mutation occurred. Without an original unmutated genome, it’s all guesswork and fantasy....

We aren’t doing great. We have more inherent genetic diseases year by year....

https://www.britannica.com/science/human-genetic-disease

“With the increasing ability to control infectious and nutritional diseases in developed countries, there has come the realization that genetic diseases are a major cause of disability, death, and human tragedy. Rare, indeed, is the family that is entirely free of any known genetic disorder. ”

“About 1 out of 150 live newborns has a detectable chromosomal abnormality. Yet even this high incidence represents only a small fraction of chromosome mutations since the vast majority are lethal and result in prenatal death or stillbirth. Indeed, 50 percent of all first-trimester miscarriagesand 20 percent of all second-trimester miscarriages are estimated to involve a chromosomally abnormal fetus.”

 

[Justatruthseeker]

But you all keep deluding yourselves with those beneficial mutations making us better.....

 

[inquiring mind]

If we are the mix of species that evolutionists suggest, the result of all the cross-breeding among all those species that individually dead-ended themselves, then wouldn’t that have given us a huge combined increase of weaknesses? I doubt there was much selection going on in the process.

A. I thought this type of non-selective mixed breeding is considered inferior and results in poorer reproduction in everything else.

B. So, if that’s the case, how did humans end up with such a high level of intelligence and social interaction skills... for the most part anyway?

It looks to me that Creation with these beneficial attributes would be the more logical answer.