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Author Topic:   Data, Information, and all that....
DNAunion
Inactive Member


Message 286 of 299 (94663)
03-25-2004 9:46 AM
Reply to: Message 279 by Peter
03-25-2004 1:31 AM


quote:
Peter: I agree though -- any analogy can be useful so long as it is relevent.
And as long as it maintains correspondence to the original...something Crashfrog clearly doesn't understand.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 279 by Peter, posted 03-25-2004 1:31 AM Peter has seen this message but not replied

DNAunion
Inactive Member


Message 287 of 299 (94665)
03-25-2004 9:49 AM
Reply to: Message 280 by Peter
03-25-2004 1:45 AM


quote:
DNAunion: And yet you responded as if I were wrong!?!?
quote:
Peter: On a grammatical point it should read:
'And yet you responded as if I was wrong'
No, it should read exactly as I stated it. When something is contrary to fact, you use the subjunctive mood..here, "were" instead of "was".
quote:
unless, of course, the possibility of you being wrong
is zero.
I've shown that your implication that I was wrong was contrary to fact. So my phrasing is correct and yours is wrong.
quote:
Peter: What's the matter, can't you write or something
Clearly better than you!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 280 by Peter, posted 03-25-2004 1:45 AM Peter has seen this message but not replied

DNAunion
Inactive Member


Message 288 of 299 (94670)
03-25-2004 10:00 AM
Reply to: Message 280 by Peter
03-25-2004 1:45 AM


quote:
Peter: You don't need even distribution (spatially) for the mutations to be random ...
DNA asks:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Why are you addressing a statement I didn't make?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
DNA wrote:-
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In such genomes, because the mutations are not evenly distributed, technically, they are not random.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter: Didn't you write that?
Yep sure did, and if you could read and understand English you would see that what I said and what you said are not the same. Hence, I correctly pointed out that you were addressing something I didn’t say. Simple, really.
Since you aren’t very sharp, let me explain the underlying logic here.
There are multiple ways to view mutations in regards to being random/nonrandom — Richard Dawkins states this rather explicitly in the quotes I just posted today. Here you go, read this one...I’ve added some emphasis for you.
quote:
We can now see that the question of whether mutation is really random is not a trivial question. Its answer depends on what we understand random to mean. If you take 'random mutation' to mean that mutations are not influenced by external events, then X-rays disprove the contention that mutation is random. If you think 'random mutation' implies that all genes are equally likely to mutate, then hot spots show that mutation is not random. If you think 'random mutation' implies that at all chromosomal loci the mutation pressure is zero, then once again mutation is not random. It is only if you define 'random' as meaning 'no general bias towards bodily improvement' that mutation is truly random." (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker", Penguin: London, 1991, p307)
So I am correct to say that hotspots show mutation to not be random in one respect.
Now, if someone comes along and looks at random from some other perspective, then an even spatial distribution would not be required for the mutations to be considered random, but that person would not be addressing what I was addressing. Get it yet?
quote:
Peter: Everything else you posted is irrelevant
Don’t you wish!
quote:
because:
ANY location on a DNA strand CAN suffer a mutation. Hotspots don't always suffer mutations.
So?????
The fact remains that the distribution of mutations in such genomes is not even - it's concentrated in some regions and lower in others - and as the strongly anti-Creationist and "hardcore" evolutinoist Richard Dawkins himself states, that means one can legitimately state that those mutations are not random. It depends upon what one means by random mutation - a topic I already stated has been debated at great length at sites like these and that we shouldn't be getting bogged down in.
quote:
Peter: I have a suggestion for you, before you post any more quotations consider whether they add or subtract from the message you are giving, and whether they support your position or not.
I always do, and they always do. If you understood what was being said maybe you’d see that.
[This message has been edited by DNAunion, 03-25-2004]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 280 by Peter, posted 03-25-2004 1:45 AM Peter has seen this message but not replied

Admin
Director
Posts: 12995
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 289 of 299 (94672)
03-25-2004 10:09 AM


Guidelines Reminder
Ah, nothing like the smell of fresh guideline violations in the morning!

--Percy
EvC Forum Administrator

Replies to this message:
 Message 291 by DNAunion, posted 03-25-2004 10:21 AM Admin has replied

DNAunion
Inactive Member


Message 290 of 299 (94675)
03-25-2004 10:14 AM
Reply to: Message 281 by Peter
03-25-2004 1:50 AM


quote:
Peter: I think Ooook asked your opinion on the origin or
information in THE common ancestor (i.e. the first ever 'This is definitely life' cell).
And if you understood what that meant you would see that he asked the wrong question.
He explicitly stated CELL when he asked about the common ancestor. The CELL that would have been the common ancestor to all extant life is thought not to have arisen until long after the origin of life had occurred...just as I stated. So my belief is that the information got into that cell by undirected evolution, just as I stated, and just as I was asked.
quote:
Peter: So you are avoiding the question ...
No, I answered both the questions that I was asked.
quote:
Peter: besides you KNOW what is being asked so failing to provide an answer even if that answer is 'I don't want to say.') is
reprehensible.
If that jab didn't come from someone too ignorant to follow the exchanges between me and Oook and between the two of us, it might mean something.
[This message has been edited by DNAunion, 03-25-2004]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 281 by Peter, posted 03-25-2004 1:50 AM Peter has seen this message but not replied

DNAunion
Inactive Member


Message 291 of 299 (94678)
03-25-2004 10:21 AM
Reply to: Message 289 by Admin
03-25-2004 10:09 AM


Re: Guidelines Reminder
It might help if you were a little more explicit. For example, would you be talking about this:
quote:
MrHambre: Anybody get the feeling DNAunion didn't get enough attention as a child?
No, that was yesterday, and no admin whined about things from yesterday. So I guess it's fine to act like a immature bully and devote a whole post to nothing but a childish insult, not adding anything of worth to the discussion.
Gee, I guess the admins need to specify exactly what jabs are legitimate and which are not.
[This message has been edited by DNAunion, 03-25-2004]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 289 by Admin, posted 03-25-2004 10:09 AM Admin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 293 by Admin, posted 03-25-2004 10:44 AM DNAunion has not replied

DNAunion
Inactive Member


Message 292 of 299 (94680)
03-25-2004 10:28 AM
Reply to: Message 282 by Ooook!
03-25-2004 6:30 AM


quote:
Oook: You do have that knowledge don't you? You didn't just sit there with a pile of biochemistry books and look in the indexes for 'information'?
Sure, I recalled all those hundreds of quotes word-for-word, and what pages they were found on, off the top of my head. Get real. I KNEW that DNA contains information and when simple logic that SHOULD HAVE worked didn't (for some completely unknown reason), then looked in the indexes to find supporting quotes.
quote:
To make it easier for you I'll draw you a little picture. How's that?
DNA/RNA ---------------------------------> DNA/RNA/Protein
Somewhere along the dotted line, your much touted 'information' got into the DNA in order for it to encode for proteins. How do think that happened?
Now, see, that's NOT the question I thought you actually wanted to ask when you changed your question yesterday to past tense. I thought you were wanting to know how the information got into the very first self-replicator, such as an RNA replicase. But now we see you weren't asking that, but were once again asking about an event that is believed to have occurred long after life had already arisen, and long after "random" mutation and natural selection were operating.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 282 by Ooook!, posted 03-25-2004 6:30 AM Ooook! has not replied

Admin
Director
Posts: 12995
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 293 of 299 (94682)
03-25-2004 10:44 AM
Reply to: Message 291 by DNAunion
03-25-2004 10:21 AM


Re: Guidelines Reminder
I wasn't focused on anything specific, but just wanted to issue a reminder that there *are* guidelines. I can how you might think I was talking about you with my comment about violations in the morning, since you posted this morning. But I was catching up on this thread from a couple days ago, so I read a lot this morning.
I think discussion here is going along pretty well, but thought I noticed a gradual increase in the number of personal comments, and in the time spent rehashing what was actually said. This seems a worthwhile thread, and I was just hoping to nudge it into being a little more focused, but I didn't mean to affect the discussion or single anyone out. I certainly see no specific behavior here requiring administrative action.

--Percy
EvC Forum Administrator

This message is a reply to:
 Message 291 by DNAunion, posted 03-25-2004 10:21 AM DNAunion has not replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22389
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 294 of 299 (94685)
03-25-2004 11:07 AM
Reply to: Message 279 by Peter
03-25-2004 1:31 AM


The Program/Data Distinction
Peter writes:
program/data distintion is quite straight forward ....
You can flip your interpretation of program and data as easily as that famous optical illusion of the goblets that morph into faces. Consider a microcoded machine. Is the top level program really a program, or is it data interpreted by the microcode? Or is the microcode just data driving a state machine? Is the offset field of a memory access instruction just part of the instruction, or is it data?
data doesn't perform any operations, program does.
It isn't quite this simple. A program doesn't perform any operations either. Both program and data sit in memory. Both the program and the data control the operations the machine performs. Where you draw the line between program and data is not unambiguous.
One can tighten up the definitions and define program as those elements within memory that can potentially be referenced (in a correctly operating program) by the machine's program counter, but I can write a program that writes program instructions to memory and then transfer control to that memory. Did I write data? Or program?
Or I can purposefully place an illegal instruction, say 0, in memory in order to generate an illegal instruction trap. Is the 0 data? Or program?
What about jump tables? Are they data or program?
To me the question about what parts of genetic processes correspond to which parts of computers is a fluid argument. There are any number of ways in which the analogy can be drawn. The DNA can be considered data or program, any which way you like. I'm all for any analogy with strong explanatory power, but just because one analogy "works" doesn't mean there can't be other analogies that also "work".
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 279 by Peter, posted 03-25-2004 1:31 AM Peter has seen this message but not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 295 of 299 (94702)
03-25-2004 1:05 PM


Now I know I must be wrong - an anonymous internet poster called me an idiot! How can I possibly refute that?

Replies to this message:
 Message 296 by DNAunion, posted 03-25-2004 1:43 PM crashfrog has replied

DNAunion
Inactive Member


Message 296 of 299 (94705)
03-25-2004 1:43 PM
Reply to: Message 295 by crashfrog
03-25-2004 1:05 PM


quote:
DNAunion: So if something’s distribution is far from being equal, it can correctly be said to be nonrandom. Thus, it can be correctly stated that genomes with hotspots — mutations that are clearly not evenly distributed throughout the genome - have mutations that are not truly random.
quote:
Crashfrog: Just curious: By extension, when I go to the Indian casino up the road and shoot craps, does the fact that the craps roll only happens at the craps table and never in the lobby or by the Bingo games - that is to say, not "equally spacially distributed" - mean that the craps roll is nonrandom?
Okay, since you seem incapable of figuring out where you made any kind of material change:
ME: I discussed mutations in a genome, the only place where "they" occur
YOU: You switched to discussing rolling craps at a craps table only, instead of rolling craps at the craps table and in the lobby and at the Bingo table, adding places where the event isn’t even supposed to occur.
You can’t see how your analogy doesn’t parallel my original...where you strayed?
Even if you don't, can't you see that arguing against me on this is pointless? I've already won, now that I’ve quoted the strongly anti-Creationist biologist Richard Dawkins stating that hotspots do show mutations to not be random, in that sense. So anyone trying to say I am wrong has already been refuted. But hey, if want to continue trying to prove a point you never can, be my guest.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 295 by crashfrog, posted 03-25-2004 1:05 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 297 by crashfrog, posted 03-25-2004 1:53 PM DNAunion has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 297 of 299 (94710)
03-25-2004 1:53 PM
Reply to: Message 296 by DNAunion
03-25-2004 1:43 PM


Jesus it takes a lot of work to get a meaningful response from you, DNA. Why is that?
I've already won, now that I’ve quoted the strongly anti-Creationist biologist Richard Dawkins stating that hotspots do show mutations to not be random, in that sense.
Naturally, since Dawkins is the arbiter of all language. Oh, wait.
Of course, all I was saying (which you might have noticed had you not flown off the handle exactly as I predicted) was that nobody who uses the word "random" in practice does so with the expectation that it always means "randomly distributed in space." So you're right, Dawkins is right, and I'm right. Mutations are random, except in space. That's still random.
That's all my point has ever been.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 296 by DNAunion, posted 03-25-2004 1:43 PM DNAunion has not replied

wj
Inactive Member


Message 298 of 299 (94821)
03-25-2004 8:26 PM


As a general observation, it appears to me that DNAunion is prone to making statements which are open to differing interpretations and then taking offense when someone adopts an interpretation which DNA apparently did not intend.
Instead of berating others for not reading his posts correctly, I suggest DNA give more thought to writing clearly and correcting any misreadings of his posts promptly and without condescension. And we can do without the apparent anger and insults. Communication is a two way street.

Replies to this message:
 Message 299 by AdminAsgara, posted 03-25-2004 8:35 PM wj has not replied

AdminAsgara
Administrator (Idle past 2302 days)
Posts: 2073
From: The Universe
Joined: 10-11-2003


Message 299 of 299 (94823)
03-25-2004 8:35 PM
Reply to: Message 298 by wj
03-25-2004 8:26 PM


And with that said...and agreed with...
This seems as good a time as any to close this baby down. Close enough to 300 for me.

AdminAsgara
Queen of the Universe

This message is a reply to:
 Message 298 by wj, posted 03-25-2004 8:26 PM wj has not replied

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