Lack of random environments

The cat is pondering the mutations hypothesis at the moment and he has a related question to ya'll.
It is postulated that all mutations are random and if the moggy understands the proposal correctly that means all mutations are random in respect to fitness. Where fitness is the capacity to make as many of copies of oneself as possible.
Now the opponents of the scenario point out that most known mutants are creatures with seven heads growing out of paws and similar monstrosities.The next bit of the proposal though is that it is the environment that determines fitness randomly brought about by chance mutations and that the environment is anything but random eliminating all which does not serve to fit in it.The cat's question is: does that mean that the three-headed monster critters are just lacking a proper environment to adapt to and to be fit in? Could there are be an environment they are the fittest for? It must be so if there is no intrinsic damage or benefit brought by a mutation but the selecting environment alone decides who is fit and who is not.
Thank you in advance for your attention and clarifications needed for enlightening of the stupid feline on that delicate issue.Edited by Alfred Maddenstein, : No reason given.Edited by Alfred Maddenstein, : No reason given.

Thread copied here from the Lack of random environments thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

Fitness is a measure of your ability to reproduce copmared to others in the same population. It is the comparison that is important. Yes, that is about it. Also, you might be interested in the hydra: You also need to factor in the history of life. Basic body plans evolved very early on in life, and further adaptations have been built on top of these early adaptations. This makes it difficult to evolve a new basic body plan since so many other adaptations now depend on what evolved before it. You can use buildings as an example. It is relatively easy to put a new doorknob on the front door, but it is much more difficult to change out the foundation.

The opponents' statement above is only true to the extent that we use the comic book definition of mutant. Using that definition, mutants means creatures that are hugely different from their parents. If we instead define mutant to mean a life with a mutation of significance with respect to fitness, then most mutants are not monsters. Obviously, some mutations cannot survive in any environment that they could realistically be found in. But we would imagine, for example that a mutation that involved external coloration might cause a creature to stand out in some environments while keeping the creature hidden from prey or predators in another.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

No. The moggy is foggy. All mutations are random in their formation. All mutations are beneficial, neutral or detrimental in respect to fitness.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Except that most known mutants aren't remotely like that. Most do something like, say, metabolize fats a tiny bit differently than their siblings. Somethings that took a graduate student four years to even discover before all this newfangled ability to sequence DNA got invented. Somethings that are so trivial that the difference in fitness they confer are zero or negligible.The seven-headed monsters die straight out of the egg.

In a sense, I guess. Consider the case where the environment includes people who are breeding for the bizarre trait in question. For example a fruit fly with antennapedia is presumably less fit in the wild than one without, but it is more fit when its environment is rich in geneticists wanting to study HOM-C genes.

What seems remarkable to me is that so many of these subtle mutations show up in environments where they are critical for survival. For example, why should some lichens be able to survive the vacuum of space? Have they needed this ability before or is it just coincidence that they have this ability at a time when we can send them into space?It seems remarkable that life so often finds the one viable course for survival. So many thin opportunities that are taken advantage of. That life is so incredibly robust and so incredibly fragile.

This is another one those things that evolutionists like to say, without ever being called on it, or thinking about the reasonableness of this presumption. As if evolution started with a simple organism, then kept building upon it, and yet no new simple organisms started again, and again?How come 5000 years ago another simple celled creature didn't start evolving to become more complex, with another entirely different foundation. And how about 100 years ago? Or 25 years ago? Was is your theory only something that has happened in the past.Its another black mark against the many your theory can't overcome.

This is a major part of your problem. You don't think about these things before you spout off some incredulous nonsense. ... or 5 minutes ago out in the front yard? Who says it hasn't? Can you know? Nothing in evolution prohibits such a thing. I personally have confidence that in fact it has happened and continues to happen.Two other concepts for you to wrap your pebble brain around if it can stretch that far without breaking.In case you haven't noticed (you really need to get out more) there is life everywhere. There is not a nook or cranny, crack or crevice on this planet that does not have some living critters in it.The second may frighten you a bit, but that's OK. Everything organic on this world, everything, is food.Let these two facts rattle around in your near hollow gourd for a bit and see if you can come up with an answer to your own question.Edited by AZPaul3, : cuz

I would concur that indeed it does seem remarkable. The observations that we see are virtually organisms getting exactly what they need to survive better, when they need it. It mirrors the smaller adaptions we see all around us, like the ability to tan, the occurrence of blisters when our skin needs more protection, muscles that grow stronger when we need them to do hard work, lungs that getting better at breathing when we need to run longer. Life is full of things that do what they need to to become better on so many levels.Random mistakes hardly seems an adequate explanation for this being so.

Yet it seems a perfect explanation to me. I do not see how it could reasonably happen otherwise and the evidence that it actually does happen this way is the only evidence that there is. Imagine a god if you wish but if there is a god then they did it this way.What I find so remarkable is that the pool of available mutations is so useful. That they successfully match up with the environment as often as they do. It is as if every possible means of exploiting the environment will eventually materialize.Is the set of all possible mutations a static thing or does it grow as life diversifies? Does life tend to accumulate an ability to survive in more environments or this an illusion?

As was pointed out many years ago, this is astoundingly similar to mudpuddles exactly fitting depressions in the soil after a rain.I wish I remembered what rain even looks like........

No. What we see are random mutations, and then we see that ones that get what they need survive.This is like having to teach you your ABC. Really, Boulder-dash? 862 posts on this forum and you haven't got this far? It does not mirror that. That's nonheritable phenotypic plasticity, not heritable mutation.And again, if you still can't tell the difference ... sheesh.

For example, when we observe the evolution of multicellularity in Chlorella? Except by pointing to the facts rather than the imaginary world in your head.