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
Of course not. The DNA code is but part of a complex whole, a part which interacts with its environment in and adaptive way not reducible to simple instructions.
Then you are deluding yourself. It doesn't affect the validity of the analogy that either DNA code or human software code "interacts with its environment," so it makes no logical sense to even say such things in the first place.
Moreover (and completely contrary to your claim above), both DNA code as well as human computer software code are reducible to simple sets of instructions. To wit, DNA code can be reduced to four sets of codons (A, C, G, and T), while human software programming eventually gets reduced to a set of two (e.g. off and on, high voltage and low voltage, 1 and 0, et al).
The analogy between human software code and genetic DNA code is rock solid. Because it is rock solid, I can refute every conceivable "spin" that you post in denial of said analogy.
The only question that remains is how many posts it will take before you accept that fact.
No, I'm actually a technical expert on digital logic and can easily recognize unscientific obfuscations on this subject when I see them.
Human computer software programming is entirely analogous to genetic DNA coding. It's a fact. It's backed by numerous supporting elements, too.
For instance, DNA stores data, processes data, and replicates itself. Likewise, human computer programming stores data, processes data, and replicates itself.
Nothing else in the universe does that. That makes for a pretty rarified association (and hence, analogy).
When DNA is processing data or code, external environmental variables/inputs affect the final output. Likewise, when human computer programs are processing data or code, external environmental variables/inputs affect the final output.
Genetic DNA code has subroutines known as "genes" that we see re-used in various species. Likewise, human computer programming code has subroutines that we see re-used in various other programs.
You would be hard-pressed to show a SINGLE behavior by either DNA or human software that isn't performed at some level by the other.
You can pretend that I'm blind, but that isn't going to improve your argument.
Contrary to your unsupportable claim, human computer programs really are analogous to genetic DNA code.
One very obvious way in which it isn't analogous is the secondary, 3^0, or 4^0 structures of DNA and the function inherent in those structures. A programmer may be able to approach this function with a string of zeros and ones but this would, necessarily be added to the software in a linear fashion. The emergent properties of phenotype come with their own laws of interaction.
A second obvious difference is the quantum nature of DNA. You compare the four bases to binary switches which is completely wrong. The chemical nature of each of the bases is not binary. A reaction between a base and it's complement on another strand or on tRNA, for example is never completely on or off. A programmer may be able to approach this phenomenon with some sort of fuzzy algorithm, but there is still something fundamentally different.
The strong analogy you make is akin to saying "We have produced LIFE on the computer" or claiming that the sequence of the human genome on the proper computer will give rise to consciousness. A sum of reductionist explanations is insufficient. Software, as yet, is a trivial reductionist analogy of only a few of the properties of DNA. Even a fully comprehensive reductionist approach is insufficient. It's like claiming that a complete Theory of Everything would give you an indication of how to play the stock market. It doesn't work like that.
You can claim that is "very obvious" to attempt to give your above "flailing" some iota of credibility, but it simply isn't even true, much less obvious. Every instruction coded into DNA has a human computer software analog twin (or set of codes that in sum form an analog twin). Furthermore, not all software is linear. Object-based programming is not linear by design, and truly sophisticated human computer programming modifies its own programming code as it executes. A simple example of computer code that modifies its own instructions as it executes is that of a compressed executable which unzips itself in parts as it runs, but there are numerous examples which are vastly more complex than that trivial example.
Your logical error here is that you are presuming that all human computer software programming is digital. Analog computers can work with both analog and digital input as well as analog algorithms. By definition, analog input and algorithms have a quantum state that can be neither on nor off, just as does DNA.
That's appropriate, after all, since DNA is an analog processing system, anyway.
Hence, the analogy of human computer programming to that of genetic DNA programming is completely valid and rock solid; one simply has to be aware that there is more to the human computer world than mere digital processing.
Nonsense. Nobel Prize Winner Stephen Hawkings says that some computer viri can already be considered as life forms. If you dispute that fact, then take up that argument with him.
Moreover, your poor effort to marginalize my analogy by using reductionism betrays a lack of understanding of both human analog control systems as well as DNA. DNA is an analog processing system. Likewise, humans have made analog computers for decades. Both process data and have inputs that are capable of being neither "off" nor "on".
Your claim that I am essentially saying that mapping the human genome will lead to computer consciousness is likewise in error, as have been every single one of your posts so far to date. Mapping the human genome amounts to mere data on a computer, but it illustrates vividly that DNA is comprised of massive amounts of data in the first place, a fact that further supports my analogy of computer programming and DNA code.
It's sad that you have been reduced to making up straw men such as the one above. You've gone less than 50 posts before you felt the need for such desperation.
Usually Darwinists last much longer...
It's still a simple imitation. That's why there is an increased use of biomolecules for computing uses. It's because digital or transistor systems, or any other systems don't approach the level of DNA systems. Good try, though.
"It's still a simple imitation. That's why there is an increased use of biomolecules for computing uses. It's because digital or transistor systems, or any other systems don't approach the level of DNA systems." - Nebullis
Again, you make fundamental logical errors. First of all, analog human-derived control systems are not simple imitations of DNA. They may mimick DNA behavior, but that's a coincidence, not a result of an attempt at imitation. Nor is that "imitation" the reason that there is a trivial increase in the use of biomolecules for professional (or even theoritical) computing.
Of course, you are correct that human computing systems, be they analog or digital, don't currently match the sophistication of Base-4 analog DNA processing, but that was my original point as well as the whole reason for pointing out that the mathematical probability/improbability of such sophistication self-forming from whole-cloth sans intelligent interaction was even LESS likely than that of workable software self-forming on human-made computers if you left enough of them on long enough.
There are multiple codons which code for a single amino acid. Threonine, for example is coded for by ACU, ACC, ACA, and ACG. You can see that the third position can freely mutate without a resultant change in phenotype. This is called a neutral mutation. If the base in the second position mutates from a C to a G, however, it makes a huge difference if there were neutral mutations present. An original triplet of ACU neutrally mutated to ACC and then selectively mutated to AGC would code for a Serine. An original triplet of ACU neutrally mutated to ACG and then selectively mutated to AGG would code for an Arginine. So a neutral mutation ends up getting "fixed" by selection of another mutation.
Oh, I see what you're asking. Such an individual would proliferate by virtue of other selectable mutations. A sort of piggyback for the neutral mutation. Until it's "fixed", and at that time the mutations do become expressed in phenotype and come under selection.
The chance for a particular mutation isn't more or less depending on whether it's neutral or not. They are all independent events. What it does mean is that the phenotypic expression moves in chunks. You can see how, at the simple level, a group of two mutations can move en block into a selectable feature. The demand for the selectable intermediate is removed. Even greater steps are taken at the protein level. Now, add the hierarchies and networks where a single mutation can effect changes for multiple features and you can quickly see how big morphological changes can take place without selectable intermediates.
Sigh. Again and again Creationists make this simplistic fallacy, again and again their mistake is pointed out to them and explained in detail.
Then they make it again.
All you've computed is the odds of N specific mutations occurring *in a row*, with *no other mutations occurring*.
Sure, that would be practically impossible, mathematically enormous odds.
However, your mistake is in assuming that the "N" mutations have to happen one after the other without fail, bam-bam-bam.
This is *not* what evolution postulates, AT ALL. Therefore, your result has absolutely nothing to do with the actual likelihood of successful evolution. It's just mathematical masturbation.
Instead, evolution postulates that somewhere, among thousands or millions of individuals in a population, amid countless other mutations occurring within the population during reproduction, beneficial mutation "N1" happens to occur.
Your calculation includes a term (P1) for N1 happening, FIRST TRY, AND NOTHING ELSE BEING ALLOWED TO OCCUR (which is of course highly unlikely). This is where you make your first major error.
Instead, you need to calculate the odds of mutation N1 happening, *at all*, over a huge number of individuals, across a large number of generations. This is, needless to say, much less unlikely. In fact, over sufficient time, it approaches certainty.
Then, your calculation presumes that mutation P2 must happen ON THE VERY NEXT MUTATION EVENT. This is, again, highly unlikely. But that's not what evolution postulates, so that's your error #2.
Instead, you simply need to calculate the odds of mutation P2 happening *sometime* in the future, to *any* of the countless generations of offspring which happen to inherit mutation N1 from the original individual in which it occurred. Note that it doesn't have to be the very next mutation event, as you presume, it could happen in the fortieth generation, among any one of thousands of descendants, after 100,000 other mutations had occurred within the population.
Again, note how much more likely this is than your presumption that the "N" mutations must occur *exclusive* to any other.
And so on through the rest of the N mutations.
If you're going to use math to analyze something, please be sure you first understand the process you're attempting to model.
Class dismissed.
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