Alleles and non-coding sequences can 'piggyback' on other alleles.
ERVs/Retroviruses can be inserted into non-coding sequences as well as coding sequences.
Adaptation to a changing environment is seldom an all or nothing situation. At any given time there are more than two available alleles at a given loci.
Many phenotypes are changed through selection types other than directional selection. There is also disruptive selection, and stabilizing selection. All three are components of natural selection. There are other selection forces such as sexual selection which do not place the population into a dilemma.
Substitution cost applies primarily where a changed environment puts extreme pressure on the population resulting in a severe drop in population. In the cases where pressures are less intense, or there is a gradation of efficacy in available alleles, the drop in population is nowhere near as precipitous.
Even if the population is dramatically reduced in number, population bottlenecks need not be fatal for the population. Not all bottlenecks result in a founder effect and not all founder effects produce deleterious homozygous alleles.
To seriously contend that substitution cost is a severe problem for evolution you have to ignore a large number of different paths which lead to fixation of an allele. You also have to assume that all changes in environment will be severe enough to quickly reduce the population size.
Just as a note, according to Joe Felsenstein he has solved Haldane's dilemma.
BTW, retroviruses are only considered different from ERVs in the generation in which they first occur. Once a retrovirus gets passed to a new generation it becomes an ERV. This refutes your claim that there is a significant difference between the two.
No, you give him too much credit -- in order to make such a false assertion as he has you don't have to ignore some things and assume others at all, you just have to be a clueless anti-evolutionist who strings buzzphrases together without the first clue what they mean or if they're applicable to the topic under discussion.
Substitution cost doesn't apply to neutral ERVs, period. But I'd just love to see GourmetDan attempt to make a case that it does (as opposed to his habit of simply asserting it and declaring, 'so there!') That would be one of the funniest things ever on these threads, like watching a pigeon try to prove the Pythagorean theorem.
Come on, GourmetDan, show us just how competent you anti-evolutionists are! Show us your work! Heck, man, even just try something ridiculously elementary, like telling us whether the rate at which ERVs fix in the population depends on population size, and why (and in which direction)... Go for it, son!
Jorge, feel free to pitch in on that question too, because since you "aced" biology, in your own words, this should be a *really* trivial question for you to answer, if you can spare any time away from your important job of beating your chest, declaring people who disagree with you insane, and telling us for the 45th time that you "aced" your college courses...
You have substitution cost no matter what the mechanism, selection or genetic drift. You can't escape it. Haldane noted that the 'piggyback' hypothesis doesn't reduce the substitution cost.
Do not conflate ERVs and retroviruses. One is assumed, the other observed.
Adaptation is consistent with a created biology.
The many types of selection merely mean that you have nothing more than random movement around a mean. You know, statis, as observed.
Substitution cost applies in every situation where a genetic sequence must move to fixation. Thousands of severe drops in population means thousands of bottlenecks and founder effects. Not all result in founder effect, but you've got thousands of proposed bottlenecks just for assumed ERV's alone, never mind supposed 'positive' selections.
So explain how Joe Felsenstein has 'solved' Haldanes Dilemma and I will explain how he has not.
The difference between retroviruses and ERVs is that retroviruses are observed, ERV's are assumed.
Big difference except in evoland.