What did it all started with?

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

That's why it is important to focus on the more objective information problem v the more subjective 'function' problem:

Of course losing the ability to digest certain chemical compounds means a bacteria can 'gain fitness' to survive it's competition, at least in the short term in a niche environment... as a bear losing it's ability to produce pigment in it's fur might do likewise in the Arctic.
But you see the problem here in extrapolating losses into macro-evolutionary gains:

Clearly you cannot get from a bacteria to a human by merely destroying existing functional information! Unless that bacteria comes preloaded with higher functions that merely require activation- removal of 'locks' and this is certainly increasingly considered as a possible solution to the problem, but Darwinism it aint!

Again the problem is not how random error destroys functional information (advantageously or not), that's very easy to test and observe.
The problem is how random errors could ever possibly create vast new volumes of functional information at the quality & quantity needed to account for events like the Cambrian- even in a trillion years, far less a few million.

You seem confused by the concepts of 'information' and 'error' in this context. Let me explain: random mutations (not totally random, but let it pass) produce variations in offspring. Some of these variations will be advantageous. Over time these are likely to become fixed in the population.

The information-carrying capacity of DNA is the number of ways its bases can be arranged. Any novel change in a particular arrangement is new information.

Mutations are called 'errors' because the DNA is not perfectly copied, etc. Mutations that produce novel sequences of DNA create new information, whether beneficial, neutral, or disadvantageous. IOW, an error that changes the sequence of DNA produces new information that can have fortunate, neutral, or unfortunate consequences.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

It's my understanding of the "punctuated equilibrium" model that variations and mutations build during the long equilibrium periods with modest or little pressure to change, but when hard stressors occur to a population, the accumulated variation is rapidly selected from based on the usefulness of some genetic forms rather than others and rapidly change the balance of the surviving population.

But, it's been along time since I read anything about it...

Yes, IIRC, Kimura showed that most genetic change was in the form of neutral mutations that result in genetic drift which, in turn, provides accumulated variation for a rapid response to hard stressors.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Actually it is from a bulletin Raup wrote titled "Conflicts between Darwin and Paleontology' and I would recommend anyone read the whole thing if there is any confusion about the context.

Not surprisingly it turns out to be about conflicts between Darwin and paleontology.




^ again, I couldn't agree more. I've also been accused of 'quote mining' for posting this exact quote! So I'll quote your 'quote mining' here in future



^ ditto

Quote-mining is selective quoting in a way that distorts the intended meaning of the quoted text.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Seems to be.
[]
But, it's been along time since I read anything about it...

Well it's a very quickly 'evolving' field:

From the introduction to a conference organized by the New York Academy of Sciences (creationists!?) in Austria a couple of years ago:

"For more than half a century it has been accepted that new genetic information is mostly derived from random‚ error-based’ events. Now it is recognized that errors cannot explain genetic novelty and complexity."

This following a conference at the Royal Society in London (more 'unscientific' creationists?) in 2016:

New trends in evolutionary biology

"Developments in evolutionary biology and adjacent fields have produced calls for revision of the standard theory of evolution"

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Quote-mining is selective quoting in a way to distort the intended meaning of the quoted text.

Thanks, - I'll keep that in mind, and I'm sure it was not a deliberate omission on your part- but just to put your own quote of Raup in larger context:

"We must distinguish between the fact of evolution -- defined as change in organisms over time -- and the explanation of this change."

he continues:

" Darwin's contribution, through his theory of natural selection, was to suggest how the evolutionary change took place. The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be. " (my emphasis)

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

he continues:

" Darwin's contribution, through his theory of natural selection, was to suggest how the evolutionary change took place. The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be. " (my emphasis)

That's why the less patchy evidence from other sources, e.g. molecular biology, has become more important. Nevertheless, the fossil record doesn't contradict natural selection.

 

[Estrid]

Quote-mining is selective quoting in a way that distorts the intended meaning of the quoted text.

There are more levels to the dishonesty.
It tends to imply that the person making the
citation has actually read and understood the
publication cited. Ie that the quotee knows a lot
more than they do.

 

[Subduction Zone]

That's why it is important to focus on the more objective information problem v the more subjective 'function' problem:

Of course losing the ability to digest certain chemical compounds means a bacteria can 'gain fitness' to survive it's competition, at least in the short term in a niche environment... as a bear losing it's ability to produce pigment in it's fur might do likewise in the Arctic.
But you see the problem here in extrapolating losses into macro-evolutionary gains:

Clearly you cannot get from a bacteria to a human by merely destroying existing functional information! Unless that bacteria comes preloaded with higher functions that merely require activation- removal of 'locks' and this is certainly increasingly considered as a possible solution to the problem, but Darwinism it aint!

Again the problem is not how random error destroys functional information (advantageously or not), that's very easy to test and observe.
The problem is how random errors could ever possibly create vast new volumes of functional information at the quality & quantity needed to account for events like the Cambrian- even in a trillion years, far less a few million.

And now you are making the error of focusing only on selection.

Once again. variation adds traits. Selection removes fatal ones immediately. Ones that do not function as well take a while to get rid of and at the same time generally promotes those that function better in a particular environment..

You will continually lose the debate when you focus on only one of these two processes.

 

[tas8831]

In evolutionary terms 'functional' means contributing to fitness, i.e. having a selective advantage. It is certainly common that genes and pathways that cease to have a selective advantage degrade over time - but the mutations that degrade them are not 'destroying functional designs' as far as evolution is concerned; there is no disadvantage to losing them. Whether a gene is advantageous, disadvantageous, or neutral, is entirely contextual, and can vary over time - even in a single individual.

The creationist does not realize that his harping on 'gain of information' as a necessity even as he argues that gaining adaptive benefits via a loss of information (using creationist definitions) don't count actually undercuts his own message.

If an adaptive 'gain' can occur while 'losing' information, then clearly gaining information is NOT a requirement for evolution.

 

[tas8831]

There are more levels to the dishonesty.
It tends to imply that the person making the
citation has actually read and understood the
publication cited. Ie that the quotee knows a lot
more than they do.

There are at least 2 creationists on here (1 of whom is still active) that had claimed to have read certain fairly obscure books (1 from the 1950s) after quoting from them. 30 seconds on google showed that the quotes they used - as indicated in one case 2 sets of ellipses and a typo, the other by altered sentence structure from the original - that they had in fact just copy-pasted the quotes from creationist sources.
If you are going to pretend to have read a source, at least maybe not copy-paste quotes from it from YEC sources wherein ellipses are used.
Point is, yes, they almost never actually read the original source material.
Then, there is this guy...

 

[Estrid]

There are at least 2 creationists on here (1 of whom is still active) that had claimed to have read certain fairly obscure books (1 from the 1950s) after quoting from them. 30 seconds on google showed that the quotes they used - as indicated in one case 2 sets of ellipses and a typo, the other by altered sentence structure from the original - that they had in fact just copy-pasted the quotes from creationist sources.
If you are going to pretend to have read a source, at least maybe not copy-paste quotes from it from YEC sources wherein ellipses are used.
Point is, yes, they almost never actually read the original source material.
Then, there is this guy...

As yec virtually mandates intellectual dishonesty*
and there are no honest sources for yec,
it is totally predictable that anti evolution posts are
going, one way or another, to be dishonest.

Anyone who can present something that shows I am
wrong about this is encouraged to correct me asap.

*Exceptions include those deprived of the opportunity
to know better

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The creationist does not realize that his harping on 'gain of information' as a necessity even as he argues that gaining adaptive benefits via a loss of information (using creationist definitions) don't count actually undercuts his own message.

If an adaptive 'gain' can occur while 'losing' information, then clearly gaining information is NOT a requirement for evolution.

Good point.

I suspect the main problem is using the wrong concept of information-as-message in this context, i.e. agent-centred thinking about communication via messages, where an intelligible (useful, meaningful) message will be corrupted by random changes to its basic symbols. In this regime, generating a completely new intelligible message requires some deliberate act of creativity. So random changes inevitably corrupt the message and new messages are vanishingly unlikely to be made 'accidentally'.*

But, of course, genes are not messages, they're more like protein recipes, so swapping their symbols around produces different proteins.

*[This is the regime of Shannon information, but even here, information is not related to the usefulness or intelligibility of the message. As Shannon famously said, “Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a set of possible messages.” But still, Shannon information is about communicating across noisy channels, which is only really useful in respect of the inheritance of DNA, which can be seen as a one-way communication across a noisy channel]

 

[Astrophile]

Fred Hoyle gives an account in his book I referred to in a previous post.

​

Thank-you for this contribution. Unfortunately, I have not read the book by Fred Hoyle, nor have I been able to find the previous post in which you referred to it. Would you be kind enough to let me know the title of the book? I look forward to hearing from you.

 

[sjastro]

Thank-you for this contribution. Unfortunately, I have not read the book by Fred Hoyle, nor have I been able to find the previous post in which you referred to it. Would you be kind enough to let me know the title of the book? I look forward to hearing from you.

The title is "Astronomy" by Fred Hoyle.
Published 1962 by Macdonald and Co. (Publishers) Ltd, London W. i. in association with Rathbone Books Limited.
Printed in Great Britain by L.T.A. Robinson Ltd, London.

 

[Astrophile]

The title is "Astronomy" by Fred Hoyle.
Published 1962 by Macdonald and Co. (Publishers) Ltd, London W. i. in association with Rathbone Books Limited.
Printed in Great Britain by L.T.A. Robinson Ltd, London.

Thank-you for your quick reply, and for this information.

 

[FredVB]

Good point.

I suspect the main problem is using the wrong concept of information-as-message in this context, i.e. agent-centred thinking about communication via messages, where an intelligible (useful, meaningful) message will be corrupted by random changes to its basic symbols. In this regime, generating a completely new intelligible message requires some deliberate act of creativity. So random changes inevitably corrupt the message and new messages are vanishingly unlikely to be made 'accidentally'.*

But, of course, genes are not messages, they're more like protein recipes, so swapping their symbols around produces different proteins.

*[This is the regime of Shannon information, but even here, information is not related to the usefulness or intelligibility of the message. As Shannon famously said, “Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a set of possible messages.” But still, Shannon information is about communicating across noisy channels, which is only really useful in respect of the inheritance of DNA, which can be seen as a one-way communication across a noisy channel]

There is still design in that which gets explanation then as selective forces working on random changes over time, that make an appearance of design, like if enough monkeys are each typing on their own typewriter machine meaningful work would be produced, that will be useful if there is a selective force working for that.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

If an adaptive 'gain' can occur while 'losing' information, then clearly gaining information is NOT a requirement for evolution.

This brings up an important distinction/definition of evolution.

Information gain is not a requirement for microevolution. But it IS a requirement for macroevolution, and that's the real distinction between the two. i.e. it's about the direction of change more than just the scale of change.

Of course a polar bear losing the ability to produce pigment in it's fur, presents an adaptive gain, at least in it's niche environment.. and we have many such examples where a loss of information provides a niche benefit. aka microevolution or adaptation. Just as the exhaust system falling off might make a car go faster..

But you see the problem here; you cannot 'macro-evolve' a single celled bacteria into a bear, by merely breaking information in the bacteria. At some point you need the exact opposite phenomena; the creation of vast new quantities of novel functional information.

Random mutation does not account for this.

 

[Larniavc]

Information gain is not a requirement for microevolution.

What units are you using to measure this information gain?

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

This brings up an important distinction/definition of evolution.

Information gain is not a requirement for microevolution. But it IS a requirement for macroevolution, and that's the real distinction between the two. i.e. it's about the direction of change more than just the scale of change.

Of course a polar bear losing the ability to produce pigment in it's fur, presents an adaptive gain, at least in it's niche environment.. and we have many such examples where a loss of information provides a niche benefit. aka microevolution or adaptation. Just as the exhaust system falling off might make a car go faster..

But you see the problem here; you cannot 'macro-evolve' a single celled bacteria into a bear, by merely breaking information in the bacteria. At some point you need the exact opposite phenomena; the creation of vast new quantities of novel functional information.

Random mutation does not account for this.

Definite information in a biological sense.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Definite information in a biological sense.

Fundamentally there is no distinction. If we are talking about individual bits of digital information, this applies to DNA or computer data.

They happen to share a similar symbolic code convention, but obviously information can also exist in ink on paper, lines in the sand, or alphabet soup.

And all of these can be used to represent the same information, e.g. a line of text.

i.e. the information itself is distinct from any particular medium it is stored in.