Posted on 03/05/2002 9:45:44 PM PST by Southack
This is part two of the famous "Million Monkeys Typing On Keyboards for a Million Years Could Produce The Works of Shakespeare" - Debunked Mathematically.
For the Thread that inadvertently kicked started these mathematical discussions, Click Here
For the Original math thread, Click Here
The central question I'm trying to address is whether design of living organisms is even possible, barring cut and try. Is it possible, in principal, to predict the effect of a novel mutation? And assuming you could predict the structural effect, could you also predict the effect on fertility and viability in a constantly fluctuating environment?
It's one thing to say that goddidit, quite another to argue for a designer that is not omnipotent.
Besides SETI, one of the other distributed computing efforts going on right now is research into protein folding for cancer research - I've been debating whether to drop SETI and donate some cycles to that recently. But the fact that it requires massively parallel distributed computing systems to figure out the potential configurations of comparatively simple proteins - that is, hundreds of thousands or even millions of machine-years - should give us some idea of the absolutely enormous computing power that would be needed to determine all the possible configurations and products of, and effects of modifications to, a given strand of DNA. And then if you understand how natural genomes work, maybe then you can start to think about designing your own genome from scratch.
If it is possible - and I'm guessing that it is, although it's just a guess - it's a long way away. Maybe if I can manage to finally quit smoking, I'll be able to hang around just long enough to see something like that happen, but something makes me doubt it. Who knows, though? Someone we've never heard of could be in a lab somewhere right now, on the verge of the massive breakthrough that gives us the key to it all ;)
How is the process of design different from evolution? What do designers do, aside from following rote rules to produce cookey cutter products? What do they do when called upon to produce something entirely new?
I don't know what mechanical engineers, but I know what software engineers do. They grab existing code, steal from others, thrash around with new ideas until some of them work. Then, after they have the new concepts mastered, they sit down and write a design plan, pretending that they followed it.
You asked how we get from light-sensitive cells to a mammalian eye. In terms of phylogeny, the phenotypes organize rather neatly along that path. Of course it's a gross simplification - web boards are not generally conducive to book-length theses, and my time would not permit me such an indulgence in any case ;)
If you would like more detail, I am sure that I can find some more in-depth material to suggest to you. However, since you have asked a few specific questions, I will try to answer them as best I can.
For example, what benefit is any kind of "lens" before the eye is fully functional?
Ah. At what step, precisely, that I propose, is there an eye that is less than fully functional?
And where is the co-evolution of the central nervous system in all this? An eye is useless without a CNS.
Insects have eyes without a central nervous system. But the question is a valid one. You should have asked it instead if that was what you were really interested in ;)
More seriously, as the resolving power and level of detail that eyes are capable of perceiving increases, there is indeed a rise in nervous system capacity as well. Which isn't particularly surprising - what good are superb eyes without some means of interpreting and making sense of what you see? And, of course, that's just one of the many functions of our complex and highly developed brains. But complex and highly developed brains like ours are not a requirement for superior visual acuity - many birds, for example, have very complex and well-developed visual cortexes (and finely tuned eyes, of course) that permit them eyesight that far exceeds our own. But if your eyesight is not even in the same league as an owl's, neither is the owl's brain in the same league as yours.
Yes, some development of a nervous system is necessary as eyes develop also, but I don't recall claiming otherwise.
More than useless--wasted resources that would be selected AGAINST.
Why? Why do men have nipples that are apparently completely useless?
You come closer to your real position when you say that just because something cannot be understood now doesn't mean it isn't true.
That is not my position regarding evolution. In fact, if you go back and re-read my post, I think you will find that what I say is that just because you cannot understand it does not mean it isn't true. And I suppose I should add that it also does not follow that if you cannot understand it, no one can understand it ;)
You have your faith; the UFOlogists have theirs; the theists have theirs. Darwinism rests on a secular materialist faith.
I think not. Like all inductive arguments, it establishes probabilities of truth, not absolute certainties. Nonetheless, we all accept as true all sorts of things that cannot be logically proven true every day of our lives. The question is not "can it be proven true?", but rather "is the bulk of the evidence falling one way or the other?" And it is.
Evolution via natural selection best explains the evidence before us, far better than any alternate explanation. I find it highly unlikely that a competing theory will muster sufficient evidence to displace it, but it would be foolish to forever foreclose the possibility.
It's not science--at least not yet.
What about it do you find unscientific?
The big question for biological science in the 21st century is WHERE this software comes from.
Setting aside for a moment the question of whether software is an apt analogy, I think that a naturalistic explanation is more than sufficient.
Really, I think we're getting at the crux of your objection, so let me make some preemptory statements here. First, finding evolution via natural selection to be a compelling theory for the development and diversity of life on earth is not a priori incompatible with a belief in the divine. Even among scholars of evolution, Richard Dawkins is an anomaly insofar as he is a militant atheist. At worst, what evolution via natural selection is incompatible with are certain very literal readings of the Bible. And conflicts of that sort are really quite easy to avoid in the first place if we accept that God might occasionally speak in allegorical or metaphorical terms. ;)
Again, insects have eyes, without having anything that resembles a central nervous system. At best, they have a decentralized nervous system.
You just can't construct a photomorph progression of believable, functional intermediates--putting together a list of eyes in ascending order of complexity does NOT prove that natural selection is what has caused the progression.
Of course it doesn't "prove" it. And it is very likely that nothing ever will. That is the difference between an inductive and a deductive argument. If you find inductive arguments to be prima facie invalid, I think that you will find that there is precious little outside the realm of pure mathematics that you can believe in. I can put together a very compelling inductive argument for the non-existence of Santa Claus, but I very much doubt that I can "prove" it, by any reasonably stringent definition of the word "prove". But something tells me you probably don't believe in Santa anyway, despite the lack of proof for his non-existence.
Nevertheless, even if it doesn't "prove" the validity of natural selection, it is evidence in its favor. It is evidence of a chronological progression of increasing functionality, specialization of traits, and diversity of taxonomy, which is what natural selection predicts should happen. It is therefore evidence supporting the validity of the theory of evolution via natural selection.
Your position is non-scientific because it is nonfalsifiable.
Of course it is. Find a fossil of a creature with complex mammalian-type eyes in some early rock layer, where the theory of evolution predicts that it should not be. Find that fossil in early Cambrian or pre-Cambrian strata, and you'll have blown a great big hole in all of evolutionary theory.
Despite its extreme implausibility (which you have essentially admitted at times on this thread--for example, that ridiculous digression into introns), you cling to it.
I wonder. One of us is blind, to be sure.
But the robots get very mad when we delicately suggest that creation is a possibility, and that the "evolution" visible in the archaeological record makes perfectly good sense, since the creator race refined their technology over time, and built on previous designs the way that all good engineers do. How could we disprove the robots, assuming there was no archaeological record of the creator race?
I like this one, although probably not for the same reasons you do. ;)
Okay, I'll bite - the short answer is, you can't disprove them, based on that particular line of argumentation. They have some evidence of their naturalistic evolution, no matter how weak we might think it is. And, by definition, we have no evidence for a creator race other than a remarkably feeble argument-by-analogy of our own. So, we can't disprove their evolution by proving the existence of a creator.
Of course, that's equally true of our evolution, as well. You cannot disprove the validity of evolution by proving the existence of a Creator, since you cannot prove the existence of a Creator. So if you want to disprove their evolution, and ours, you need to find some other way to go about it, as that's a dead end. What this is supposed to demonstrate escapes me, but there you are.
Of course, we might suppose that since they are presumably rational and logical beings, they might very well admit that their "creation" was a possibility. And so do I. Of course, they would also (being the rational and logical beings that they are) likely suggest that the probability of such a creation, especially in light of the available evidence, was vanishingly small. And so do I. ;)
DOS and Windows XP are both binary (unlike genetics). Anyone who knows anything about software can easily see a pathway, in fact, multiple pathways between the two.
But DOS did evolve int XP. Are you suggesting that Windows was planned?
I wasn't referring to 'base'. I was referring to state. A bitflip mutation program requires a system of two states such as software uses. And, yes, you can find multiple bitflip paths between DOS and Windows XP.
In the world of genetics, mutations include crossovers, duplications, additions, and subtractions. Bitflip mutation programs include these as well. If you line up the binary code for DOS and Windows XP, you can bitflip your way from one to the other with great ease.
Your original point was that this is not true for a genetic code. Let's start with something very simple like two same sized-genomes from two different species. Can you imagine bitflip mutations that would transform one genome into the other?
DOS and Windows XP can both be considered as messages.
Anyone familiar with cryptography can tell you that to extract one message from another requires a Key and an Algorithm (which could be as simple as a bitflip, but more than likely would be much more complex).
The math in this thread effectively covers the mathematical probability/improbability of such a Key self-forming on its own at random (i.e. without intelligent intervention).
Essentially (though the actual number can vary slightly based upon definitions/pre-conditions used), the Key would have to be less than 96 bytes long for even a remote chance at forming "naturally."
Can you show a 96 byte Key that can extract the Windows XP "message" from DOS?
Not on your life.
On the contrary, transistors and semiconductors work very well with two basic states (low voltage/ground and high voltage). To truly work at Base 4 would require hardware capable of operating effectively when FOUR voltage states were present, such as Ground, + 5 volts, + 10 volts, + 20 volts.
To imagine that NOTHING about our computer technology would change is to overlook the incredible hurdles facing multi-state electronics at their most fundamental level.
Now, can our Base 2 electronics be used to represent any Base and any state? Of course. Can they "easily" operate at their most fundamental levels in any Base or state? Not now.
Except that in evolution, noise can be information. Some of the information is contained in the structure and attributes of molecules themselves. (In some ways, life is a property of matter.)
Again, using an imprecise model for life and then imposing the limitations of that model on life is not valid.
"Do you mean through chemical reactions, or randomly? One of these things is not like the other..." - ThinkPlease
You are sadly missing the point. It's not that chemical reactions are "random" or not, it's how chemical reactions sequence data that matters.
The author's math effectively covers the sequencing of data, be it via magnetism on your hard drive, chemical reactions forming DNA strands, monkeys pounding letters to quote Shakespeare by accident, et al.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.