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Member (Idle past 1796 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Doesn't Natural Selection lead to Specified Complexity? | |||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 18047 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: That would be true of any definition of specified complexity. But it seems clear that your notion of complexity is the common view, and not Dembski's improbability measures.
quote: "Tweaking" generally refers to minor changes. I am talking about iterative change rather than iterative design, which includes major additions (often unforseen by the original designer).
quote: Laziness implies spending less effort than could be spent. While iterative change is less work than building a new design from scratch providing a new version in less time, spending less money doing so doesn't qualify as laziness in my book.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18047 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: Let us be clear, you wrote it as if it were a mathematical function with no other variables. If drift is not predictable, at least in principle, from gene distribution alone, you are either conceding a random element or admitting to the existence of other factors. More importantly you excluded environment, which under your formulation means that no event can have any effect on gene distribution other than through selection.
quote: Yes, I do know what determinism means. More importantly, I understand that your question essentially assumed that the "chance" element would always come out the same way, which is hardly helpful. You have not yet dealt with my point that the outcome of evolution is strongly affected by non-selective events which are best modelled as chance. Not because universal determinism is necessarily false, but because they are completely disconnected from selection.
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"complete and fully detailed" at the same level of abstraction as the population.[/qupte] In other words you admit to intentionally using misleading phrasing ? "Not abstracted at all" might be considered a level of abstraction technically, but why not simply say that you don't abstract your description of the population either ? (I would add that to the best of my knowledge, populations are not usually described in complete detail - I guess that must be another of your oddities)
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PaulK Member Posts: 18047 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: Well, I would disagree. Too many to model as a deterministic process, perhaps, but I would question if that was appropriate even if it was possible. And that doesn't explain why you excluded the environment from your drift function, while including it in your natural selection function when, under your definition it affects both. It looks very much as if you are using a more normal definition of environment.
quote: Universal determinism is irrelevant to the questions before us. If natural selection is "deterministic" solely because of universal determinism then it is deterministic only in a trivial sense which tells us nothing useful about it. Regardless of determinism the outcome of evolution is influenced by many factors which might as well be random and therefore treating them as random gives us a clearer view of natural selection, whether they are random or fully deterministic.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18047 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
Unless you have changed your definition of the environment, you are still wrong to exclude it from your drift function.
And to suggest that drift is purely a function of gene distribution when you yourself add population size as a factor is self contradictory. (You are also inconsistent in your use of the variable k. You probably meant to use k-1 in your natural selection function).
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PaulK Member Posts: 18047 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: No, k is the resultant population, which is shaped by the pressures on the previous generation, so you should use k-1, just as you do for drift.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18047 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: I see your mistake now. You assume that natural selection is primarily about survival. It isn't. It's all about reproductive success, and the survival of individuals is only relevant insofar as it contributes to reproduction. Therefore, the generation you need to look at is the previous generation, the parents.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18047 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: That is very unclear. However, I think I can say that whatever it means exactly, it is wrong. For instance a living individual that is sterile due to a genetic defect is in the current population, but does not contribute genetic material to the next. If you exclude dead individuals, then a dead individual that has already bred successfully has contributed to the next generation, despite being excluded from the current one. It is breeding that is important, not simple survival.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18047 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: But that would be through actions, not genes.
quote: That's why it IS a problem. You don't count them, even though they do contribute to the next generations.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18047 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: Related to, but hardly dictated by. So you're really reaching there.
quote: That doesn't make sense, and seems to contradict what you just said about NOT counting them.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18047 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: Well, that may explain why you aren't making sense. If you don't understand the position you are trying to defend how can you make sensible arguments? The point you are meant to be explaining is why the effect of selection on the distribution of genes in the current population should be a function of the distribution of genes in the current population, rather than the previous generation. And yet in the case of drift you DO use the previous generation. Interestingly, this means that if there were no drift, the previous generation would have no relevance to your formula.
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