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Author Topic:   Evolutionists improbable becoming probable argument
Taq
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Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


(1)
Message 13 of 80 (907241)
02-21-2023 10:57 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by mike the wiz
02-19-2023 8:12 AM


mike the wiz writes:
Imagine you had to get a heads on a coin toss one billion billion times consecutively. More probable events would be so much more abundant that even calling it an "improbability" only works in theory, not in practice.
Another example of ID/creationists not understanding probability.
Let's flip a coin 4 times in multiple trials.
First try: H, H, T, T
Second: T, T, T, T
Now, which is more improbable? Guess what, they are both equally probable. Any combination of H and T is going to have the same probability. For 4 flips the odds of the specific order of results is going to be 1 in 2^4, or 1 in 16. This will be true for every single trial you flip coins 4 times.
What if we flip the coins 100 times in each trial. ANY order of flips is going to have a probability of 1 in 2^100 or 1 in 1.26x10^30. All you have to do to get a result that has a probability of 1 in 1.26x10^30 is to flip a coin 100 times and record the outcome. The very fact that events occur guarantees a highly improbably outcome.
The ID/creationist trick is the Sharpshooter fallacy. This is where a shooter shoots at the broad side of a barn and then draws bulls eyes around all of the bullet holes, trying to claim that he is a great sharpshooter.
This is done all of the time in ID/creationist literature. They point to a specific genetic sequence and then calculate the odds of that sequence occurring. They paint the bulls eye around the bullet hole. Instead, they should calculate the probability of any beneficial adaptation occurring, but they never do that.
Conclusion; improbable things, superbly improbable things, are more to be equated with FALSE things, when they reach a stage whereby more probable things will simply always prevent the chain from occurring because reality simply makes those things so probable as to be almost guaranteed such as the sun rising tomorrow.
Then I shouldn't be able to flip a coin 100 times or shuffle a deck of cards according to ID/creationist logic. Both result in superbly improbable things.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by mike the wiz, posted 02-19-2023 8:12 AM mike the wiz has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 14 by sensei, posted 02-27-2023 7:55 PM Taq has replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 28 of 80 (907763)
02-28-2023 10:44 AM
Reply to: Message 25 by sensei
02-28-2023 3:38 AM


sensei writes:
Your source talks about the "fallacy" of assuming that all sequences are equally likely. You must have missed that Taq is the one using this assumption in his examples.
For a random sequence, all sequences are equally likely. Why do you think this isn't true?
And even if many sequences were less likely than others, say 99.99% of bad ones were disregarded completely even, just to steel man your argument, it still would not be of much significant help in the vast space of possible sequences.
What does that even mean?
And the space of gene sequences of known lengths is well defined.
Where is it defined?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by sensei, posted 02-28-2023 3:38 AM sensei has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 37 by sensei, posted 02-28-2023 12:50 PM Taq has not replied
 Message 38 by sensei, posted 02-28-2023 1:01 PM Taq has not replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


(1)
Message 29 of 80 (907765)
02-28-2023 10:52 AM
Reply to: Message 14 by sensei
02-27-2023 7:55 PM


sensei writes:
For larger genes, the space grows exponentially. Do you think the number of useful sequences grows just as fast? Very unlikely, I'd say.
That's just a bare assertion. You aren't showing us any math or any evidence.
With 400 bases, the space is already as large as if every atom was a universe itself. And we are still at the very low end of short genes.
That's irrelevant. Let's do some math for what is happening in the human genome.
The diploid human genome is 6 billion bases. There are 3 possible substitution mutations at each base, so that's a total of 18 billion possible mutations. Each of us is born with about 50 mutations. The probability that each person is born with the 50 mutations they are born with is 18 billion to the 50th power, or ~6x10^512. That's just for one person. And yet, this happens all of the time even though the outcome is so improbable. It also produces a human even though the odds of that genome existing are nearly zero.
Do the math and evolutionists are playing a losing game.
Funny how you can't do the math.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 14 by sensei, posted 02-27-2023 7:55 PM sensei has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 35 by sensei, posted 02-28-2023 12:46 PM Taq has replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 30 of 80 (907766)
02-28-2023 10:54 AM
Reply to: Message 16 by sensei
02-27-2023 8:28 PM


sensei writes:
If anybody assumed that sequences were equally likely, it's Taq, with his four coin example.
Apparently, you can't do the math.
What are the probabilities of these two sequences of coin flips?
sequence 1 : H, H, H, H
sequence 2 : T, H, H, T

This message is a reply to:
 Message 16 by sensei, posted 02-27-2023 8:28 PM sensei has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 31 by sensei, posted 02-28-2023 12:24 PM Taq has replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


(2)
Message 32 of 80 (907780)
02-28-2023 12:28 PM
Reply to: Message 31 by sensei
02-28-2023 12:24 PM


sensei writes:
You sank this low to deny what you said yourself?
Your inability to answer basic probability questions is noted.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 31 by sensei, posted 02-28-2023 12:24 PM sensei has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 36 by sensei, posted 02-28-2023 12:48 PM Taq has replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


(1)
Message 40 of 80 (907788)
02-28-2023 1:06 PM
Reply to: Message 35 by sensei
02-28-2023 12:46 PM


sensei writes:
Probabilities are always below 1. You don't even understand that. Your whole example is laughable.
You only call it laughable because you can't address it.
And learn to make useful predictions ahead of time.
Ding Ding Ding Ding. WE HAVE A WINNER!!!
This is exactly what you and other ID/creationists ARE NOT DOING. All you are doing is looking at sequences once they are here instead of predicting their emergence ahead of time. This is the whole problem with the ID/creationist argument. This is the Sharpshooter fallacy.
You are accepting theories with probabilities billions upon billion times lower.
If what you claim is true then I shouldn't be able to shuffle a deck of cards because of the highly improbable outcome.
You should not be discussing science. You are unqualified!
I am a scientist with multiple peer reviewed papers. I have been working as a molecular biologist for 26 years.
You don't know even what science is. You don't know what a theory is. You don't know what evidence is. And you sure don't know how probabilities work.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 35 by sensei, posted 02-28-2023 12:46 PM sensei has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 43 by sensei, posted 02-28-2023 1:13 PM Taq has replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 41 of 80 (907789)
02-28-2023 1:08 PM
Reply to: Message 36 by sensei
02-28-2023 12:48 PM


sensei writes:
If you deny that the sequences you posted, are equally likely, under assumption of total randomness of each base, then you are beyond help.
All sequences are equally likely in a random sequence. That's what I have been saying for a long time now.
The very act of producing a random sequence means we will have produced a highly improbable outcome. Wouldn't you agree?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 36 by sensei, posted 02-28-2023 12:48 PM sensei has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 45 by sensei, posted 02-28-2023 1:24 PM Taq has not replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 48 of 80 (907816)
02-28-2023 4:14 PM
Reply to: Message 42 by sensei
02-28-2023 1:11 PM


sensei writes:
Do you have any reason or evidence to support the idea of more useful sequences at greater lengths, compared to the total number of possible arrangements?
I see no reason why length would have anything to do with it. It is entirely possible for the active site of a protein to be restricted to a small portion of the protein while the rest of the sequence can change quite a bit without losing function. In fact, from my experience with proteins I wouldn't be surprised if short proteins were more restrictive than large proteins.
I also have no way of calculating how probable functional sequences are. ID/creationists seem to think they know, but are incapable of producing any relevant calculations.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 42 by sensei, posted 02-28-2023 1:11 PM sensei has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 51 by sensei, posted 03-01-2023 3:31 AM Taq has replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 49 of 80 (907817)
02-28-2023 4:15 PM
Reply to: Message 43 by sensei
02-28-2023 1:13 PM


sensei writes:
I know better than you, how probabilities work.
You have yet to demonstrate this claim.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 43 by sensei, posted 02-28-2023 1:13 PM sensei has not replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 60 of 80 (907866)
03-01-2023 11:02 AM
Reply to: Message 51 by sensei
03-01-2023 3:31 AM


sensei writes:
So if 10% of all sequences of lenghth 200 would be useful, you would also expect that 10% of all sequences of length 200000 are useful?
It is unknown how many sequences are useful. What is known is that relatively short peptides can be useful. This would mean that a longer protein has more sequence to find function. If anything, I would suspect that longer proteins have a better chance of being functional than short ones.
I think you are under the false assumption that the entire length of a protein has to contribute to function. This just isn't the case.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 51 by sensei, posted 03-01-2023 3:31 AM sensei has not replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


(2)
Message 61 of 80 (907867)
03-01-2023 11:09 AM
Reply to: Message 53 by sensei
03-01-2023 3:46 AM


sensei writes:
Well, it does not appear to be self-evident to Taq. But he thinks he understands probability better. Little does he know.
I know more than you. I totally agree that the longer a sequence is the less probable any single sequence is. But we aren't talking about any specific sequence. We are talking about functional sequences.
Suppose we see usefull sentences of a few dozens of characters. And we also see a book of a few hundreds of thousands of characters.

We would want to determine how this book formed. Does it consist of shorter stories that exist seperately or have existed in the past and for whatever reason stopped existing? Can we find possible paths along which this book developed from random changes of shorter stories?
If we saw that existing books fit into a nested hierarchy we would suspect that they share a common ancestor. We could also watch books reproduce, and see what pattern of substitutions occur in each generation.
We could then compare the observed pattern of substitution to the differences between the different books to see if the differences between the letters is consistent with the observed pattern (such as transitions outnumbering transversions).
We could look to see if there are parasitic books that randomly insert their short texts into much larger books and see if we find the same insertions at the same position in many different books which would indicate a single insertion in a common ancestor.
We could compare how much of the writing was conserved over generations, and what wasn't. We could then see if sequence divergence matches the pattern expected from common ancestry.
We could then use consensus sequence to find the most functional writing that has been conserved over many generations, and use our knowledge of common ancestry to reconstruct the writings of many past generations using consensus sequence.
Those are a few off the top of my head.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 53 by sensei, posted 03-01-2023 3:46 AM sensei has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 62 by sensei, posted 03-01-2023 1:07 PM Taq has replied
 Message 64 by PaulK, posted 03-01-2023 1:35 PM Taq has replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 63 of 80 (907883)
03-01-2023 1:23 PM
Reply to: Message 62 by sensei
03-01-2023 1:07 PM


sensei writes:
Nobody is talking about a single sequence here.
I didn't say that there was a single sequence in the post you are quoting.
Funny how you always work towards nested hierarchy.
You asked how we could figure out their origins. If those books fit into a nested hierarchy then we would expect an evolutionary process and common ancestry.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 62 by sensei, posted 03-01-2023 1:07 PM sensei has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 65 by sensei, posted 03-01-2023 1:39 PM Taq has replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


(1)
Message 67 of 80 (907906)
03-01-2023 4:34 PM
Reply to: Message 65 by sensei
03-01-2023 1:39 PM


sensei writes:
So how would you determine if books fit a nested hierarchy? Given two random books, how do you even compare the two?
You would need many books to determine if they fit into a nested hierarchy. As for measuring the phylogenetic signal, the quantitative measure of how well the data fits a nested hierarchy, you could use the same methods used for DNA sequences.
Given two random books, how do you even compare the two? They may not even be the same language.
If they don't fit into a nested hierarchy then we could certainly consider that they were separately created.
If we stretch your metaphor, all life speaks the same language at a genetic level. You can take a human gene and express that gene in bacteria, which I have actually done a more than one occassion. There are mice that are fluorescent green because they express a jellyfish gene for a fluorescent protein, as another example of humans moving pieces of genomes around. As a molecular biologist, there is only one language you need to learn.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 65 by sensei, posted 03-01-2023 1:39 PM sensei has not replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


(1)
Message 68 of 80 (907907)
03-01-2023 4:39 PM
Reply to: Message 64 by PaulK
03-01-2023 1:35 PM


PaulK writes:
To an extent that is the case - manuscripts copied by hand are an example of imperfect reproduction. I don’t think we see anything like as good a nested hierarchy as in the case of life, but an element of it is there.
If each manuscript was copied from the previous copy it could be possible to trace ancestry and reconstruct the original, given there are enough branching lineages. In the same way, it is possible to reconstruct much of the ape common ancestral genome by comparing the genomes of humans, chimps, gorillas, and orangutans (and gibbons if you want to include them).
Related to that is the use of deliberate errors to detect plagiarism, in maps, for instance. That might be compared to the evidence from ERVs.
There are a lot of parallels we could point to if manuscripts were copied and past on in a similar fashion to genomes.
Another example would be the game of telephone where each person in a line whispers a message to the next. If we set up a branching pattern where two lines were started very three people we could construct a phylogeny of the final messages at the end of each branch, and possibly reconstruct the original message.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 64 by PaulK, posted 03-01-2023 1:35 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 69 by PaulK, posted 03-01-2023 5:10 PM Taq has replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 70 of 80 (907910)
03-01-2023 5:15 PM
Reply to: Message 69 by PaulK
03-01-2023 5:10 PM


PaulK writes:
If. I believe that what we can do is quite limited. There was continuous copying - because books wear out. And hand-copied books are nowhere as numerous as living creatures.
You would definitely need lots of data for a thorough reconstruction.
Also, books wearing out wouldn't be a problem anymore than it is a problem that organisms wear out and die. As long as each copy was made from the last the old copied books could fade away. We would use the most recently copied books (the most recent generation) to reconstruct the whole (if there were quite a few of them with a decent representation of different branches).

This message is a reply to:
 Message 69 by PaulK, posted 03-01-2023 5:10 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 73 by PaulK, posted 03-02-2023 12:13 AM Taq has not replied

  
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