TomK
Yes of course I would agree, yet I think we are playing up this notion of genetics as information much too much. Genes are like information, nucleotides are like letters in a long series of words that code proteins and other things. I honestly don't know where the trouble is here.
The trouble is that you want to show that mutations can cause a
loss of information. The question than becomes what you define as a loss of information, how we can arrive at such a conclusion objectively. With what you say above, we still have no good way of seeing what a loss or gain of information would be in the first place, let alone that we can determine what the direction of it would be.
I am assuming that these other authors and 'creationists' have some sort of warped idea of what genetic information might be, and that you seem entirely ready to argue about such definitions with the likes of Demski and others seems to presuppose that all creationists would see things the same way, or whatever, its really kind of confusing.
Not really. I did give Dembski and Shannon (the latter of whom has laid the foundation for information theory) as examples, but not more. Especially my first two points hold whichever argument you are giving. The third point may not hold, depending on your argument. But given the arguments you have made till now, I don't think it is far off.
I said before that sfs's comment what cryptic to me, and I am still having trouble with it. Maybe someone should tell me what "all creationists" think about the definition of genetics being like information that way I can finally figure out what I should think.
The problem is that such a definition has never been given. Not one that can be applied. That is also why I was asking you for one. If you have no applicable definition, you cannot say whether information increases or decreases.
Anyways, point one, genetic information is just that, the first dimension being a linear sequence of 4 extremely small molecules called nucleotides. These molecules are the 'letters' of our genetic instruction code and are shown symbolically as A,T,C, and G. This is what I mean when I talk about genetic information, or genetic code. These letters are strung together like a linear text.
ok.
When is the information increasing, when is it decreasing? If the 'letters' increase in number? Or if they confer some 'meaning' in the form of functioning genes?
Once again, this has much less to do with my point than it does with the point you think I should have.(which I assume comes from these ID'ers you guys have been mentioning)
I think it has quite a lot to do with your statements, although of course what you are trying to demonstrate may be less connectd with those. But then why make them? This I find confusing.
As for the demonstration that mutations cannot 'increase' information, I never made such a claim, as a matter of fact I don't even know what you mean by such a statement. IN my initial chart I added a small curve for beneficial mutations as well as some references showing the ratios of beneficial : deleterious mutations. So I don't deny that they can happen. IM afraid Im missing some crucial creationist argument here by Spetner or Demski, and I havent read either of their books. However I will read the books when I get a chance.
So now you are defining 'information' as whether the code is beneficial or not? Then why not say that? Because a detrimental mutation may actually contain more 'information' than a beneficial one. For example, the deletion of 32 bases from the genes of a certain white blood cell shut down the function of one of their receptors. This could be described as a loss of information in several ways, namely in the loss of number of base pairs, as well as in the loss of functions. However, it
is beneficial. It makes it harder for HIV-viruses to latch onto the white blood cell, hence increasing resistance to it.
You see, this isnt my point at all, while I certainly don't want to oversimplify it, I feel that you are forcing me to, even though I am not ready to sum it up. But for a concise summary I would say by way of illustration that my idea basically states that the very few beneficial mutations would never be able to cause evolution because humanity is basically suffering the kind of genomic deterioration which causes species to become extinct. Basically any good mutations can be visualized to be like small drops swimming against a tidal wave of deleterious mutation. Here is the previous information about it, which I still havent heard any feedback about which addresses what it is I am really proposing here.OK. So the following is a quote originally written by me:
Such questions can definitely be problematic now, with the relaxed mutation rate. That is also the statement Muller makes in the article you provided by him. However, natural selection 'rates' were brutal in the past. But then again, birth rates were also high. Look at epidemics in the past such as plague outbreaks. Although some estimates (such as a 70% decimation of the population in England) may be high, more reliable esimates put the death on between 10 and 40 percent of the population in a year. The initial outbreak of the plague in Hubei (China) may have claimed as much as 90% of the population. In 1990 in Angola the child mortality rate under 5 was 260 per 1000. This means that a quarter of the children born there did not make it past age 5. 15% will not live beyond their first year. Yet do you see an indication that these populations will become extinct? No, because these high rates are offset by high birth rates of 45 births per 1000 people, which is more than twice as high as the world average. It is four times as high as the dutch birth rate (11 per 1000).
It seems to me that you are drawing the questions in your post too much from our current, highly protected society with very low birth rates. When you look at selective pressures in developing countries or in our countries 150 years ago, the picture changes dramatically.
Well I agree with you. All Im saying is that if you think that my argument is 'not good' or based on some method of logic that you do not see as valid then certainly I can relate with you. But personally, if someone is making nonsense, I would not be able to listen very long.
I would be too confused.
However I think that I am making sense, and I think that I do indeed try to back up my points with real evidence...
Which is why I keep listening (so far
). Because you are putting a lot of effort in your posts. I can listen for hours to people whom I think are wrong, as long as their arguments amount to more than just plain thumbsucking and handwaving.
OK. So I think that most honest geneticists would admit that the human population is genetically deteriorating, due to rapid mutation accumulation and relaxed natural selection pressure. (Basically the 'relaxed NS pressure would refer to the relatively low pressure which humans have put themselves in due to civilization, nutrition,technology, etc). Basically I think they realize that genetic information is being lost in our collective genome, and that the result is reduced fitness. This reduction in fitness for our species is believed to be occuring at 1-2% per generation(Crow 97)
http://www.pnas.org/content/vol94/issue16/
There are some charts and figures here to refer to.
So the question becomes: How much selection pressure would be needed to completely stop genetic degeneration?
Or a better question would be, can it be stopped?
Two things. The first to hope to clarify my point on genetic information further. If the overall fitness is decreasing due to relaxed natural selection, this could mean that genetic information is increasing depending on how you define information. Because the accumulating amount of mutations would mean that there are more, not less, variants of different genes in the human population. When we quantify information as the number of alleles in a population, decreased natural selection will mean that the number of alleles that is allowed to remain in the population goes up. This then means an increase in the amount of total information in the population.
Second, why not look at animals? Or at humans 150 years ago? Most animals do not benefit from a relaxed amount of natural selection. Natural selection has also only been decreasing for the majority of the population in the last 150 years. Look at African countries, plenty of natural selection there. I cannot give an answer to you in numbers, but I think these instances demonstrate that natural selection can be pretty brutal and despite this, organisms can still survive. Mostly because rabbits aren't the only ones who like to mate.
z
) tr.v. in·fused, in·fus·ing, in·fus·es 1. To put into or introduce as if by pouring: infused new vigor into the movement.
