A Second Mathematical Proof Against Evolution [AKA - Million Monkeys Can't Type Shakespeare]

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

Actually I was responding to a different point you made a while back - something about mutations dieing out.

Just to be clear here, the one is the probability that the mutation occurs in any one reproductive event and the other is the long term percentage of instances of the mutation in the population. I do think they're different because the mutation is heritable so percentages of its occurrence in successive generations are correlated - you're assuming indepedence I think. A manifestation of this correlation is that once the mutations appears is has a probability of becoming fixed that's basically the number of occurrences divided by the population size. Thereafter it remains prevalent until the un-mutation (I assume its equally unlikely as the mutation) occurs and then becomes fixed. Obviously that could take a very long time.

A bigger point is you're making the same mistake as the article's author - the likelihood of one particular outcome (in this case a set of particular neutral mutations) is not very interesting. One must figure what the set of "interesting" outcomes are and compute that probability.

Yes, that's really special. You've demonstrated that you can read from a non-technical dictionary and yet still not understand what we're talking about in regards to data.

I am familiar enough with the issue to know that you won't find a reputable technical dictionary that defines data as "things."

But of course we can clear up the matter by overlooking the misuse of this word and get to the heart of what you are attempting to say. Given what we know, it is difficult to attribute the existence of life to anything other than purposeful design because it's just too complex to come about without design. At this point we are very close to being on the same page...except that I would stress that the argument for design is dependent on the notion that what we know is all there is to know.

The hard reality is that there is no way to plot out the probability of anything happening without knowing the conditions, the factors that could enhance or prohibit something from happening. We don't know--and never will know--if there were any special conditions in the universe that would make a transition from non-organic to orgaic matter more probable at the time life came about in the universe. We've only been able to analyze a small percent of what the universe is made up of. "Given what we know," just isn't enough to make any probability statement.

"We don't know--and never will know--if there were any special conditions in the universe that would make a transition from non-organic to orgaic matter more probable at the time life came about in the universe. We've only been able to analyze a small percent of what the universe is made up of. "Given what we know," just isn't enough to make any probability statement."

You're still missing the point of the math in this article. We can predict the likelihood of data sequencing itself without intelligent intervention.

We can calculate the odds of data being already sequenced on a hard drive when it is formed. We can know the mathematical probability of characters that are formed by pebbles falling on keyboards - making an English word. Likewise, we can derive the probability / improbability of bases sequencing themselves without intelligent intervention into DNA strands capable of creating life.

And the odds for such occurances aren't good. The author shows that for our alphabet, non-intelligent key-presses are unlikely to ever form sentences of more than 96 characters, with "ever" being defined as 17 Billion years for 17 Billion Earth-like planets.

That is a mathematical way of saying that large, long, complex sequences do not form naturally.

But that doesn't rule out Evolution, natural abiogenesis, the big bang, or even primordial soup theories.

If we could show that Life can be formed from DNA strands that are comprised of fewer than 96 bases in their entire sequence, then there actually would be math that supports the natural creation of life without intelligent intervention.

Then again, showing that sort of Life might very well be akin to showing that Windows XP could be written with 96 lines of code, even though we know that it takes Millions of lines of code to program XP.

Likewise, even the simplist life forms, such as the amoebae, contain Millions of sequential bases in each DNA strand.

You are a doofus (sp?).

And you are clearly unable to have a discussion without behaving like a 15 year old.

Read the context of the threads. We weren't having a wide-ranging discussion of the probability of ANY beneficial somatic change. We were talking about a PARTICULAR unspecified beneficial somatic change, and whether that change could conceivably have been reached via N small mutations.

Yes, we were, but the point is that that sort of calculation is a fallacy. If you don't understand the relevance of my shuffled deck example, I'd be happy to help you with any part that you failed to grasp.

Twice a week in the Texas Lotto, a 16-million-to-1 event occurs, week after week, all year long. Should we thus conclude that the Texas Lotto is so astronomically impossible that it couldn't possibly be occurring? This is the flaw in your argument.

The point I was making was that bringing NONFUNCTIONAL mutations into the explanation doesn't help the evolutionists' argument, because natural selection by definition cannot operate on NUNFUNCTIONAL mutations.

Yes, that was your point, and the fact remains that it's a silly one, for exactly the reasons that I and others have explained. Nonfunctional mutations provide a pathway for the accumulation of changes until a workable modification is stumbled upon (at which point natural selection kicks in). The fact that evolution can't work on the nonfunctional mutations until/if they eventually come together in a useful combination is entirely beside the point, I don't know why you're so fixated on it. The fact remains that nonfunctional mutations "help the evolutionists' argument" by being one of the many ways that beneficial changes can be introduced into the population without requiring that every single-base-pair mutation be a beneficial one in and of itself.

Congratutlations on your high school math. Good work, boy. I have a bachelor's degree in math from Harvard. And you?

Sorry, I don't believe it. Your mathematical analysis here has been extremely simplistic. A math major, from even a state school, would understand the fallacy of ignoring the statistical universe, for example. You might wish to consult a book such as John Allen Paulos's Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences, and then reconsider your argument. In short, you have confused the probability of a particular outcome with the probability of some outcome -- read the shuffled deck example again until you figure it out. I learned this in my first week in my first college probability class, what's your excuse? Are they really not covering such elementary concepts at Harvard any more?

Similarly, I highly doubt that Harvard would allow anyone to graduate with a math degree who was able to make such ludicrous declarations as P1*P2*...PN being, and I quote, "next to impossible", *without* first examining the likely values of "N" or "P(i)" to get an estimate of the actual results of the calculation. Hey, Harvard-boy, the outcome of four coin flips is also P1*P2*...PN, is that "next to impossible" too? *snort*

Nebullis stipulated that she could flip bits from DOS and end up with Windows XP.

Correct.

I then correctly pointed out that to achieve that feat, that she would need both a Key and an Algorithm.

Incorrect.

You did indeed challenge her to provide a "cryptographic" transformation that could change one into the other IN ONE SINGLE TRANSFORMATION, but since that's not what she was talking about, you were flat wrong in your claim that "to achieve that feat, she would need both a Key and an Algorithm".

But thanks for playing.

For one thing, Windows XP was designed by intelligent beings, not naturally evolved.

Which is beside the point, since the issue that was raised was whether it was *possible*, theoretically, to get from one to the other via a sequence of small bitwise changes.

Designs can skip evolutionary steps; Evolution can't. That's post #557 in a nutshell.

No, post #557 in a nutshell was that you were trying to change her suggestion (huge number of serial bitwise changes) into something else entirely (a single gigantic cryptographic transformation that makes the transition in one single step).

It's pure apples and oranges. The fact that you think your post is relevant in any way to hers shows that you either fail to understand her example, or that you don't understand your own (i.e., the nature of cryptographic transformations).

"Because detrimental mutations like having two heads strongly tend to be weeded out (by interfering with propagation), whereas neutral mutations (the sort being discussed) don't." - Dan Day
Your point above merely confirms your original error.

Nonsense.

I understand the difference between the forces at work on harmful mutations, and the *lack* of selective pressures on neutral mutations. You obviously haven't yet figured that out:

Mutations can not have a 100% expected probability of being passed on to offspring if it can be demonstrated that any mutations fail to be inherited, such as the example you cite above.

It was *your* cited example, don't try to foist it off on me.

Is it *really* your contention that because harmful mutations get weeded out, that it is *therefore* not possible for neutral mutations to propagate?

Let's reinsert the qualifiers which you dishonestly snipped out of your summary:

[*NEUTRAL*] Mutations can not have a 100% expected probability of being passed on to offspring if it can be demonstrated that any [*HARMFUL*] mutations fail to be inherited

Gosh, suddenly the nature of your error becomes a lot more apparent, doesn't it?

Again, you've got an apples and oranges problem. That seems pretty common for you.

Harmful mutations do indeed get weeded out. Neutral mutations don't. Therefore the odds of propagation of one is different from the odds of propagation of the other. Why is this such a difficult concept for you to grasp?

You're not making much sense here, I'm afraid. Go off and work on your thesis until it has some internal logic, then get back to me. I'm getting tired of talking about apples only to have you jump in and yell, "oranges! What about the oranges, look at my orange!"

To begin to calculate [the probability that a mutation exists in a population], we have to ask ourselves what the probability is that a mutation would occur. The second question is what the percentage is of individuals with the mutation over the next relevant time span.

Once a mutation occurs, the probability of it passing to the next generation or through a population is either random (via drift--in which case the probability moves toward 1 or 0) or follow any of a number of selection models. These models are based on the sorting of genes, or more inclusive sections of the genome called loci, within a population. The sorting of individual mutations follows the sorting of the loci they are located in.

"No, post #557 in a nutshell was that you were trying to change her suggestion (huge number of serial bitwise changes) into something else entirely (a single gigantic cryptographic transformation that makes the transition in one single step). It's pure apples and oranges. The fact that you think your post is relevant in any way to hers shows that you either fail to understand her example, or that you don't understand your own (i.e., the nature of cryptographic transformations)."

Don't be simpleminded. A cryptographic algorithm does not have to be all one step. One can encrypt an already encrypted file, that was itself already encrypted. Likewise, one can decrypt a file that has already been decrypted. Triple DES does this everyday, in fact.

You erred. You assumed that extracting the Windows XP message from DOS had to be performed in a single step. That sort of oversimplification of cryptography either means that you don't really know much about the field, or that you are deliberately setting up a strawman to knock down later, perhaps by claiming that since what I asked "had" to be performed in a single step (when it doesn't), that I was changing the game (when I demonstrably was not).

You do get credit for having a bad attitude, but not for being clever.

Mutations can not have a 100% expected probability of being passed on to offspring if it can be demonstrated that any mutations fail to be inherited, such as the example you cite above. - Southack

"It was *your* cited example, don't try to foist it off on me. Is it *really* your contention that because harmful mutations get weeded out, that it is *therefore* not possible for neutral mutations to propagate?" - Dan Day

First of all, you cited my example in your response, so don't try to distance yourself from it now. Second, by my recall this is the first post that you've made to me wherein you add the new qualifier of "neutral" to your original erroneous claim that "mutations have a 100% expected chance" of being passed on to their offspring.

And even when one considers "neutral" mutations (an oxymoron, perhaps, since by definition a "neutral" mutation makes no change in a beast), even "neutral" mutations do not have a 100% expected chance of being passed on to their offspring.

Broadly speaking, not every life form lives to successfully propagate itself. Even if a mutation manifested itself in a newborn, there is not a 100% chance that the newborn will live to breed, that the breeding will be successful, and that there will even be a birth, much less that said mutation would actually survive the whole process internally to the genes of said offspring.

Yet you pretend in post after post that first mutations, and then later "neutral" mutations all have a 100% expected probability of being passed on to offspring.

In short, you are uneducated, wrong, and busted.

Your claim (or claims, plural, if one considers your new use of the "neutral" qualifier) can not stand even cursory, much less rigorous scrutiny.

Even Nebullis would agree that you are wrong on this claim, and she's on your side...

"Once a mutation occurs, the probability of it passing to the next generation or through a population is either random (via drift--in which case the probability moves toward 1 or 0) or follow any of a number of selection models." - Nebullis

I'm afraid that your buddy Dan doesn't quite believe you...

"The odds of the mutation appearing in subsequent offspring? The "expected value" is 100%, in a species that is neither growing significantly in population nor declining, although the actual results can vary from zero offspring carrying the gene, to a large number depending on the fecundity of the species. On average, though, the gene will be passed on to one offspring by each parent that carries it."
624 posted on 4/8/02 3:27 AM Central by Dan Day

"Isn't it clear that he means that in a fixed sized population each instance of a mutation will be passed on to one offspring on average? That seems intuitively obvious."

That's not the case at all. A mutation is a rare occurance, and when it does happen, it tends to happen in a first-adaptor, not all at once in an entire population. That first adaptor doesn't even have a 100% chance that it will survive to breed, much less birth an offspring, and even when the offspring is born, that doesn't mean that the mutation will be passed along. For instance, the two-headed snake is unlikely to have offspring which each have two heads. Genetically engineered pigs, which carry organs for humans, are also not assured a 100% chance to produce offspring which carry those same genetic alterations.

Contrary to your claim of mutation-proliferation being "intuitively obvious," the opposite is actually the scientific reality.

Even "neutral" mutations fail to have a 100% probability of being successfully passed to subsequent offspring.

Didn't you just make the claim that such mutations were intuitively obvious? How is it "obvious" that Every mutation, "neutral" or not, will be successfully propagated?

Do you think for one minute that if a life form gets a mutation, that it is automatically protected by Darwin's Angel, will attract a mate, and that it will successfully breed offspring?

What part of 100% are you having difficulty rectifying with passing on a mutation, "neutral" or not, take your pick, and HOW is that "obvious" to any rational mind?

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