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

  
sensei
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Posts: 473
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Message 62 of 80 (907876)
03-01-2023 1:07 PM
Reply to: Message 61 by Taq
03-01-2023 11:09 AM


Nobody is talking about a single sequence here. That is a straw man and you know it.
Funny how you always work towards nested hierarchy. Biased much?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 61 by Taq, posted 03-01-2023 11:09 AM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 63 by Taq, posted 03-01-2023 1:23 PM sensei has replied
 Message 76 by Percy, posted 03-02-2023 9:03 AM sensei has not replied

  
Taq
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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.

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 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

  
PaulK
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Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


(1)
Message 64 of 80 (907892)
03-01-2023 1:35 PM
Reply to: Message 61 by Taq
03-01-2023 11:09 AM


quote:
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.
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.
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 61 by Taq, posted 03-01-2023 11:09 AM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 68 by Taq, posted 03-01-2023 4:39 PM PaulK has replied

  
sensei
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Posts: 473
Joined: 01-24-2023


Message 65 of 80 (907893)
03-01-2023 1:39 PM
Reply to: Message 63 by Taq
03-01-2023 1:23 PM


So how would you determine if books fit a nested hierarchy? Given two random books, how do you even compare the two? They may not even be the same language.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 63 by Taq, posted 03-01-2023 1:23 PM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 66 by AZPaul3, posted 03-01-2023 3:08 PM sensei has not replied
 Message 67 by Taq, posted 03-01-2023 4:34 PM sensei has not replied

  
AZPaul3
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Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 66 of 80 (907898)
03-01-2023 3:08 PM
Reply to: Message 65 by sensei
03-01-2023 1:39 PM


We could ask your ID god ... if anyone could find it.

Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned!

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Taq
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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.

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Taq
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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.

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 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

  
PaulK
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Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 69 of 80 (907908)
03-01-2023 5:10 PM
Reply to: Message 68 by Taq
03-01-2023 4:39 PM


quote:
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)
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.

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 Message 68 by Taq, posted 03-01-2023 4:39 PM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 70 by Taq, posted 03-01-2023 5:15 PM PaulK has replied

  
Taq
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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).

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 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

  
Parasomnium
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Posts: 2224
Joined: 07-15-2003


(3)
Message 71 of 80 (907911)
03-01-2023 6:14 PM
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.
Now, let's not go overboard on this thing, Mike. You don't need a billion billion consecutive coin tosses for what you're trying to demonstrate, just upending a bucketful of coins all at once is more than enough, and it's much easier to visualise.
The more important thing to note about your example is the mistake that you make by specifying in advance that all the coin tosses need to be heads. So, basically, you are saying that throwing a bucketload of coins on the floor and seeing them all end up heads is vastly improbable. But you forget that any other outcome is equally improbable. Yet, when looking at the seemingly random mess of coins on the floor, nobody is going to be surprised. Because, after all, some configuration had to happen. It's only amazing if it happens after you specify that exact configuration in advance, be it all heads, or any other permutation.
So, in conclusion: an event with a vanishingly small probability is not by definition impossible. A couple of hundreds of coins on the floor prove it.

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

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Theodoric
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Posts: 9076
From: Northwest, WI, USA
Joined: 08-15-2005
Member Rating: 3.7


Message 72 of 80 (907913)
03-01-2023 7:13 PM


As Mike has never responded should not this thread be shut down?

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -Christopher Hitchens

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

"God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.

If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?


Replies to this message:
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PaulK
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Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 73 of 80 (907915)
03-02-2023 12:13 AM
Reply to: Message 70 by Taq
03-01-2023 5:15 PM


Ah, but the effort of copying largely stopped when printing came in. Everyday copying became completely unnecessary when a printed replacement could be obtained.

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 Message 70 by Taq, posted 03-01-2023 5:15 PM Taq has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 74 by Tanypteryx, posted 03-02-2023 12:45 AM PaulK has not replied

  
Tanypteryx
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Posts: 4344
From: Oregon, USA
Joined: 08-27-2006
Member Rating: 5.9


Message 74 of 80 (907916)
03-02-2023 12:45 AM
Reply to: Message 73 by PaulK
03-02-2023 12:13 AM


A macroevolutionary event.

Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned!

What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python

One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie

If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy

The reason that we have the scientific method is because common sense isn't reliable. -- Taq


This message is a reply to:
 Message 73 by PaulK, posted 03-02-2023 12:13 AM PaulK has not replied

  
Parasomnium
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Posts: 2224
Joined: 07-15-2003


(1)
Message 75 of 80 (907917)
03-02-2023 1:31 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by mike the wiz
02-19-2023 8:12 AM


Another thing, Mike: you go into great detail with your examples of improbable scenarios, heaping complicating elaborations on top of each other in order to increase the improbability of what you are sketching. But you never mention even one detail about abiogenesis. You simply state that it is equally improbable as your fantastically improbable stories.
Have you thought about how many molecules bump into each other somewhere in the universe at any moment in time? Or have you given pause about how big the universe is and how much time there has been for molecules to react with each other? Those numbers really do dwarf your improbabilities to the point of them becoming rather mundane happenings. If you think a billion billion is a large number, think again. Now, I realise I'm also just stating this without precision, and you don't have to believe me, but you could at least think about abiogenesis in some more detail before you dismiss it as way too improbable, and therefore impossible.

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

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

  
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