What did it all started with?

[Guy Threepwood]

But the thing is that it isn't a loss, they still have the bone structure of their fingers, but now they work to shape and move their flippers.

I take your point, there are still bones and joints and tendons etc, but there are specific genes required to shape all these into highly specialized designs like wings or the legs of a gazelle, or a human hand that has the dexterity to play a guitar..

Put it this way; there are unfortunate genetic mutations in humans that can clump the fingers together into a flipper like appendage 'in one go', that might well work better for swimming than guitar playing.

But no single mutation is ever going to do the opposite; give a seal the dexterity of a human hand- even though as you note, the basic structures are all there.

Because the former is a loss of specificity, & the latter is an enormous gain

Do you have any justification for why mutations are limited in the degree of change they can implement to a lineage of life forms? (Especially when there is fossil and genetic evidence for the evolution and diversification these lineages.)

Well based on what we can empirically observe, mutations generally break original function, whether an advantage or not. But the observation is only what we would expect from the math. There are always an infinitely greater number of ways you can destroy functional information than create it.

Especially in a digital information system like DNA which is highly sensitive to corruption, e.g. the codon example earlier- where inserting new random information essentially scrambles everything that follows.

Genetic evidence doesn't go back very far, and as for fossil evidence, as David Raup, (curator at the Field Museum. Chicago) said - the fossil record certainly shows us that evolution has occurred, if we define evolution as merely change over time. But it does not tell us how that change occurred, and that is really the question.

 

[partinobodycular]

Seals lost the extra definition and specialization required for agile limbs and toes which allow a heavy animal to move nimbly on land.
Just as Penguins swim better than flying birds, but clearly wings require a lot more specificity of design to fly, than they do to simply paddle in water..

That's why a penguin is not an example of an intermediate evolutionary stage towards flight, but the exact opposite
just as a seal would be a devolution of an agile land animal, back into the water, back to an earlier, simpler configuration

It's essentially the same example as polar bears losing the ability to produce pigment in fur.

Sure all represent an advantage in niche environments, but losing something you used to have, doesn't explain how you acquired it.

It seems to me that you're just demonstrating confirmation bias... focusing on the lost abilities and disregarding any beneficial ones.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I take your point, there are still bones and joints and tendons etc, but there are specific genes required to shape all these into highly specialized designs like wings or the legs of a gazelle, or a human hand that has the dexterity to play a guitar..

Put it this way; there are unfortunate genetic mutations in humans that can clump the fingers together into a flipper like appendage 'in one go', that might well work better for swimming than guitar playing.

But no single mutation is ever going to do the opposite; give a seal the dexterity of a human hand- even though as you note, the basic structures are all there.

Because the former is a loss of specificity, & the latter is an enormous gain

But you've got no metric to say if it's a loss or a gain. You never have and still do not. You keep making the claim about genetic information and you have not once provided what the definition of information is when it applies to biology.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

It seems to me that you're just demonstrating confirmation bias... focusing on the lost abilities and disregarding any beneficial ones.

Point being that lost abilities often are beneficial, but they are still lost abilities.

Discarding disadvantageous traits is fine for small scale adaptation, but a bacteria cannot become a human by merely losing capabilities.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Point being that lost abilities often are beneficial, but they are still lost abilities.

Discarding disadvantageous traits is fine for small scale adaptation, but a bacteria cannot become a human by merely losing capabilities.

So bacteria must have GAINED capabilities then to become a human.

 

[Landon Caeli]

So bacteria must have GAINED capabilities then to become a human.

Reproduction seems to be the cause for change to occur in the first place, right? Nothing would have ever gained any capabilities, if reproduction wasn't a thing, thus, evolution would have never occured.

...So how did reproduction begin? Replication...

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Reproduction seems to be the cause for change to occur in the first place, right? Nothing would have ever gained any capabilities, if reproduction wasn't a thing, thus, evolution would have never occured.

...So how did reproduction begin? Replication...

I mean... yeah, basically.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

But you've got no metric to say if it's a loss or a gain.

Sure you do, we can directly observe losses of function directly related to genetic mutations

if a mutation removes a polar bear's ability to produce pigment in it's fur, that's a lost function of genetic code, regardless of any gain in camouflaging.

i.e. you have to make the distinction between a loss/gain of functional genetic code, and a loss/gain of advantage- two different things

You keep making the claim about genetic information and you have not once provided what the definition of information is when it applies to biology.

The discovery of information being stored in genetic sequences goes back to Watson and Crick in the 50s, hardly a controversial observation these days.

DNA is how biology stores information, but the information itself could be stored in other mediums, it's still the same data. i.e. there is nothing inherently unique about biological information itself, it's just information, data.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

So bacteria must have GAINED capabilities then to become a human.

Exactly, the question is how.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Reproduction seems to be the cause for change to occur in the first place, right? Nothing would have ever gained any capabilities, if reproduction wasn't a thing, thus, evolution would have never occured.

...So how did reproduction begin? Replication...

It's an even greater mystery.

 

[Landon Caeli]

I mean... yeah, basically.

Maybe the bifurcation and fractalization of minerals and amino acids?

...Like crystallization of amino acids? But then there was the progression, that just carried on. It's crazy.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Sure you do, we can directly observe losses of function directly related to genetic mutations

if a mutation removes a polar bear's ability to produce pigment in it's fur, that's a lost function of genetic code, regardless of any gain in camouflaging.

i.e. you have to make the distinction between a loss/gain of functional genetic code, and a loss/gain of advantage- two different things

But any animal that loses an advantage dies because of the lack of advantag and thus does not pass on their genetics. That's how natural selection works. Also, animals do not technically lose traits. They are just switched off.

The discovery of information being stored in genetic sequences goes back to Watson and Crick in the 50s, hardly a controversial observation these days.

DNA is how biology stores information, but the information itself could be stored in other mediums, it's still the same data. i.e. there is nothing inherently unique about biological information itself, it's just information, data.

And yet you still have no metric for how that 'information' is measured. DNA is not akin to a computer.

Exactly

Thus, evolution.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Maybe the bifurcation and fractalization of minerals and amino acids?

I cannot say on that specific regard. Biology is not my strongest suit, especially for specifics like this.

 

[Landon Caeli]

I wonder if this could be repeated.

 

[Shemjaza]

I take your point, there are still bones and joints and tendons etc, but there are specific genes required to shape all these into highly specialized designs like wings or the legs of a gazelle, or a human hand that has the dexterity to play a guitar..

And also specific genes to shape them into the flippers of a seal.

Using the most specialised examples of vertebrate digits as if they are proposed to be a single step from some base form is misleading.

You can find steps along the way in terms of dexterity, strength, flight and swimming all based on the same four or five bone setup in a vertebrates "hand".

Put it this way; there are unfortunate genetic mutations in humans that can clump the fingers together into a flipper like appendage 'in one go', that might well work better for swimming than guitar playing.

But no single mutation is ever going to do the opposite; give a seal the dexterity of a human hand- even though as you note, the basic structures are all there.

Because the former is a loss of specificity, & the latter is an enormous gain

But a mutation that left a seal with differentiated fingers would be significantly more vulnerable... in both cases we are describing a loss of function and not specificity.

"Can play guitar" isn't particularly measurable on a pan-life scale and that kind of abrupt radical change is also probably not even beneficial.

Well based on what we can empirically observe, mutations generally break original function, whether an advantage or not. But the observation is only what we would expect from the math. There are always an infinitely greater number of ways you can destroy functional information than create it.

Flat frequency and probability aren't as significant problems when you have a system of selection in place.

Especially in a digital information system like DNA which is highly sensitive to corruption, e.g. the codon example earlier- where inserting new random information essentially scrambles everything that follows.

That isn't the case. There are a multitude of mutations that even if they significantly alter one aspect do not simply cascade through the rest of the chain.

Computer code might be a nice illustrative analogy for DNA, but they are fundamentally different.

Genetic evidence doesn't go back very far, and as for fossil evidence, as David Raup, (curator at the Field Museum. Chicago) said - the fossil record certainly shows us that evolution has occurred, if we define evolution as merely change over time. But it does not tell us how that change occurred, and that is really the question.

Genetic comparisons that clearly demonstrate familial relationships intra species investigations function exactly the same way across different species.

The comparisons of non-coding DNA and the existence of genetic atavisms are extreme support for for macro evolution and common ancestry.