Supernatural information supplier

Mike, new information can be added by mutation and frequently is. This part of your suggestion is wrong.

First let's do some theoretical thinking about it.What changes can happen in the genome?We could add or lose a single BP or a set of BPs (base pairs) right? (among other things).These can all happen due to mutations. All of these are possible.If losing a BP is a loss of information then adding one must be a gain of information. Therefore we can get both.Do you have any problem with this? If not we can carry on to examples.

Ah, I see, you're not actually talking about information at all. It is something else that you're after.First: It is not safe to assume that a BP was providing any function. A loss or gain in the genome can add or remove or leave unchanged any functions. Much of the genome doesn't code for proteins so changing it my cause it to start coding for something it didn't before.The idea that less in the genome is automatically less in the phenotype is not accurate. It is a bit like the instruction : "Do not add 1 cup of salt." in a pie receipe. Removing the "not" which is a loss of information produces a significant effect. Replace salt with sugar and it has another effect.Now it seems you want a mutation that adds function in a creature. Can you give me some more clarity in what you want. There have been a bunch of them given over the months here in EvC. Perhaps you have some idea of what you do not count and why you don't?I need to understand what you think a "function" is. The word information here is now no longer applicable. It is not what you are talking about at all.(However, back to the original example, if a BP being lost really did remove some "function" then the adding of the same BP would, obviously (I hope) add some "function". Since either of them are possible mutations it demonstrates that a mutation can add a "function" (whatever that is).This message has been edited by NosyNed, 11-17-2004 06:49 PM

That is exactly opposite to the point he was making.The phrase "fully understand" might be, in some philosophical way, true but it is not a practical thing. It is just like the child who keeps asking "why?" to each answer, over and over until it becomes very silly.We can understand all we need to know about building houses with, at most, an understanding of the material properties of wood, without understanding how the wood got those properties. That it even came from trees is at most very tenuously connected to house building.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding buried in the above. The original analogy may have helped foster that.The phrase "To be or.... is the question" is one of a very, very large number of possible "successful" phrases in the English language.Let us say that all phrases of about that length (heck let's say all possible novels that make sense in English) represent the genome of a viable animal.Your post is suggesting that the phrase given is the only viable outcome. That is one flaw in the analogy. There are many, many viable outcomes.You comment that "To be" may represent a harmful mutation. The highest likelyhood is that it will be neutral it seems from the number of mostly neurtal changes we carry. That doesn't really matter.If "To be" is harmful then the phrase "To be or ... is the question" will never evolve. Something else will. One of the truely astronomical number of different possible phrases (or novels).The mistake is focussing on a particular outcome. The outcomes you actually get are only going to be ones for which the first changes are beneficial in some way (or perhaps just lucky).So in this case you will get the final phrase only if "To be" is actually beneficial so this analogy is telling you that "To be" is beneficial.Meanwhile the monkeys are generating many, many billions of partial phrases. Just like the many billions of living things on earth at anyone time do.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 12-01-2004 04:12 PM

Yes, a set of phrases. And we aren't looking for precisely the eye that humans happen to have. We are looking for a workable eye that a human could use successfully. It could be better or not quite as good as what we have. The size of the set is important and we don't know how big is it. Just that it is rather large. No, I am not talking about junk DNA in this case. I am talking about neutral changes within the coding part of the DNA. There are many, many neutral ones. There are also many that are so slightly beneficial or detrimental that they have a practical effect of neutral. But we are not discussing the underlying machinery that the DNA drives. That is the question of the origin of life. We started with:

quote:

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"Carrying the analogy farther, this is a great way to look at mutation and natural selection in how they produce information. Let's pretend that a monkey does type "To be". If this were equivalent to natural selection, these words are kept."

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Here is exactly where the evolutionary story begins to unravel for me. If "To be or not to be, that is the question?" is a DNA sequence that defines a process or mechanism, and the proverbial monkey types "To be", why would this be selected, and more importantly, why would it take over the population? This mutation, in all likelyhood would be detrimental to the animal, but even if it were a neutral mutation, why would it get selected? The animal with this mutation would have no better chance of surviving than his fellow critters, and probably less. So the odds of getting the whole phrase at once still applies.

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We are talking about evolutionary processes you seem to be worrying about the origin of those processes which isn't what I thought the above was asking about.

Yes, any old scenario will do. Since the whole ID arguement is that there is no possible way. Once there is a possible way (but not necessarily the way) the argument is done with. What makes you say that? We have connecting animals from fish to amphibians. We have connections from reptiles to mammals. I'm not sure how much there is from amphibians to reptiles, someone else will have to answer.What do you mean by "shown"? Your claim that changes seem to be within certain parameters and then stop seems to be based on selection conditions (such as dog breeding) where no time is allowed for mutation to accumulate to any degree. What you seem to have here is that there may be a "speed limit" on what the maxium speed that evolutionary process may be expected to work at. What you do not have is any reason to say there are any road blocks anywhere.You have to look at the case where there are both parts of the proces. Both mutations and selection.

Let's be clear that all, or most, of us agree with this. I again want to emphasize a couple of things.1) We don't have more than the most sketchy of a framework for how living things could have arisen. It is understood to be an interesting enough problem that there is at least a handful of labs working on it. It is understood, from the bit of reading that I have done that DNA must have come later after life without it got going. You are right that getting there is a big deal and will require a lot more research. But so what? We simply don't know everything.2) The evolutionary processes depend on imperfect replicators having arisen. It doesn't matter how they did. Evolution, as a powerful process for producing lifes diversity, is not weakened if we don't know how the first replicators arose.If you think so then obviously you will demand that we know everything about everything before you will give up this line of arguement. If that is the case then we might as well stop now. We don't know everything about everything. We may never. That doesn't mean there isn't one hell of a lot that we do know. And we learn a lot every year. I think your point is that there have to be both the right DNA and the righ mechanisms for dealing with it in place. It seems that you are re-iterating the IC argument. Is true?As as been shown over and over, IC systems can evolve. The existing forms do not have to appear all at once. The different parts can co-evolve.It seems you computer analogy just brings up the basic form of the IC argument again. It is not a useful point for you to bring up.(as noted above any analogy that does not involve reproduction does cut it).This message has been edited by NosyNed, 12-13-2004 01:29 PM

Of course, this is not great refutation of much, except for a completely evidenceless arguement from incredutlity. For the argument put forward by some ID'ers it is all that is needed.

Famously, the evolution of the mammalian ear. It has been referenced here a number of times.I'm going to be away a fair bit for a few days so I encourge others to jump in here.

Well, since it does add information based on the only quantitative, rigorous definition of 'information' that I know of perhaps you should supply your definition of 'information' which makes this so obvious.

I think you have a good point in there. I believe that what was meant was that suggested naturalistic solutions need to be testable to be of any value. Naturalism in general is perhaps a bit too broad. There may well be, someday, something which proves to be unexplainable through natural mechanisms. In the meantime suggesting that a gap in knowledge implies a need to a supernatural solution flies against all of our historic experience.Over and over, these gaps have been pointed to and over and over they have been closed. That doesn't prove they always will be. It just suggests which is the best approach to bet on if you want a safer wager.

And how does one quantify more or less information?That is how do I tell when uncertainty has been decreased?

Well, I'd agree with what you have between quote marks if you replaced "good" with "firm" or "final" or "complete" (or something like that).It is also what I get from the reading I do. If you allow your impression to be formed by reading just one source or hearing what one scientistist opinion is then you will get a distored impression. What you say there is no surprise to me it is exactly what I would say the consensus opinion is out there.One persons "good" proposal may be anothers "so-so" proposal. The 3 things you list are all being researched and how "good" the current state of knowledge is will be a bit of a personal opinion. They are also in different states of development and confidence. (and changing at different rates of speed.)The "negative" effects of pure naturalism might be a matter of personal opinion. I don't see that there are any. I do see negative affects of magical thinking and a disconnect from reality.If the implications would be huge then I don't see why they aren't there now. What you have said above is, as I noted, probably the current consensus opinion. I have certainly heard and read individual scientists say about the same thing about each of those areas.

The intelligence is setting up the simulation as you note. This is analagous to the laws of physics, the universe and the first life. Since, I think, we are discussing evolution here that is irrelevant at this point. For now you may take it as an analogy to the case where God is responsible for all of those things.After that we are using evolutionary processes which are capable of producing complexity etc. Then let's see the details of this simulation too. I disagree with you, unless they fudge it they won't be able to do any such thing. Until they do it you don't have anything here. Show your work please. Since the entire mechanism is subject to the evolutionary process why can't it produce both the phrases and new machinary.However, it apppears that you may have something there. We'll have to ask a biolgist/geneticist about this one. It is my understanding that the machinary is much more similar from one life form to another than the genomes being processed by it. It that is true then your view point here just helps support evolution.