Quality Control the Gold Standard

Boy did you just fall off the turnip truck or what?

quote:

---

Software configurable hardware, such as Programmable Logic Arrays, are on the market which accept a bit string instruction which is used to configure or “wire up” a hardware circuit to give it a desired architecture. This can be done an indefinite number of times. By treating the bit string instruction as a Genetic Algorithm “chromosome”, one has the means to evolve hardware.

​

The concept was pioneered by Adrian Thompson who in 1996 evolved a tone discriminator, using fewer than 40 programmable logic gates and no clock signal in a FPGA. This is a remarkably small design for such a device, and it is still not understood how it works. For example, one group of gates has no logical connection to the rest of the circuit, yet is crucial to its function. It is thought that this group somehow modulates the power supply or influences other connections by generating a Magnetic field.

---

The mechanisms of mutation and natural selection are not only so powerful that they do exactly what you just claimed they can't do - be used to design functioning hardware - but they can design hardware so effective we can't understand how it works.I'd say that's a fairly effective rebuttal of your OP. Judo chop!AbE: Sorry, didn't give the cite. Evolvable hardware - WikipediaThis message has been edited by crashfrog, 02-07-2006 09:16 PM

Right. Exactly like DNA. Exactly like the issue at hand.Look, evo, if you didn't understand the argument, it would have been better for you to simply say so, rather than reply to me with this nonsense.

My wife's phylogenetics text has a slightly different number; the accepted rate of substitution in nuclear mammalian DNA is more like 3.2 per gbp (billion base-pairs).So the mutation rate is a little higher than you've been saying. I can cite that from the text if you wish. I notice that you haven't cited anything at all.

Ever heard of Hemoglobin C? It's recent mutated version of the human hemoglobin complex that confers resistance to malaria. Did you and your wife have children? I'm sorry if you did, and they were left motherless, but if you did, then there was no selective pressure against her oncogene, because the cancer it caused didn't prevent her from passing on her genes.If you hadn't had children yet, then you're mistaken - her gene was selected against.Also I notice that you don't seem to be terribly concerned about the 10-50-odd mutations you yourself possess.

So, what you're saying is, you didn't even read the article? Why would it be both simple and error-prone? Spoken like someone who doesn't know anything about design.

I have not ever personally attacked you.On the other hand, your topic subtitles have been nothing but statements about what morons your opponents are. The RNA replicators I'm familiar with have no error rates, which is what makes them not living things. It's the errors that are crucial - yes, even though some of them are fatal - to the evolution of living things. Probably most of them wouldn't. If you're under the impression that the history of living things is anything but the record of a vast amount of death, you're sadly misinformed.

I presumed it was about what was in the OP, about how engineers would "never" use mutation and selection in the process of design.After that was rebutted with examples of engineers doing exactly that, EP didn't see fit to continue that discussion. At this point he seems mostly content to call people names and then call "foul" against imagined infractions by his opponents.

Yeah but you're just looking at substitution rates. There are many other kinds of mutation that you are apparently ignoring.

No, you said the substitution rate. As I said, there are other types of mutations that you are ignoring. These were not what I was referring to. I presumed that you were aware of the other types of mutation that you were ignoring; apparently I was wrong. Other types of mutations that you have ignored include deletions, additions, duplications, and reversals. Your point fails because you're only looking at substitutions and not the other kinds of mutation.

I'm a product of public schools. I had learned far more about relativity and QM by the time I graduated than I had ever learned about evolution.That's my own experience, but the fact that almost no layperson - even the intelligent ones - has any accurate knowledge about evolutionary theories and reasoning indicates to me that my experience isn't unusual.I notice too that you offer no evidence to rebut him; you only accuse him of dishonesty. How you mistook that for a legitimate argument I cannot imagine. No, they're not. Just minsinformation about evolution. Misunderstandings about evolution. And outright fabrications of the model by creationists like yourself.

Just for substitutions, though. And actually the accurate figure is something like 3.2 substitutions for mammalian nuclear DNA. It goes up and down for other species.And that still doesn't address other mutations, like duplications and reversals. Just stop me now if you don't understand what I'm talking about.

No, you're not paying attention. I've told you twice now that I'm not talking about environmental mutagens and UV rays and the like; I'm telling you that there's more than one kind of mutation, and the data that you're looking at doesn't include all of them. It just looks at substitutions, one of the basic mutations commonly examined in molecular phylogenetics. I've told you three times now - there's more errors than that, even, because you're looking only at substitutions and not other mutations. You're reading tables that say "substitutions" and assuming that that's the total number of mutations that happens.It isn't. You're looking at sources designed for phylogenetics instruction, because phylogeneticists begin by considering only substitutions. But more mutations happen than just substitutions, just from the regular copying process alone.

You've never heard of a little show called Star Trek?

Right. And, in each of those sources, you're getting the substitution rate. We've been over this.

I guess I don't understand what the hell you're trying to say. They stated out by wondering at what rate substitutions occured; they observed how many substitutions occured; then the reported the rate at which substitutions occured. Luck didn't have anything to do with it.Then, you read a table of the rate at which substitutions occured, and assumed that substitutions accounted for all mutations that ever occur in nuclear mammalian DNA. And then when I pointed out your error, you started calling me names out of embarrasment. Seems pretty straightforward to me.You've read a table of the rate of nuclear substitutions, and misunderstood it to refer to the general mutation rate of nuclear DNA. This error has been pointed out to you several times so far but you have refused to correct yourself.