And that matters because?
If that is your only complaint or crit I will take it.
Richard
The answer is yes. There are many known natural processes that produce repeat regions in genomes.
Also, science never asks if God is an explanation for anything. If we don’t know how something works then we say we don’t know.
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@St.Roymond has a good response to this:
“And it goes back to chance: chance that the currents in the planet’s core flowed the way they did, chance that one continent rode up over another, chance that the climate was right to erode a canyon while uplift continued . . . all sorts of randomness along the way.”
In other words, you would not have been able to predict the shape and geology of the current conteninents 4.5 billion years ago as planet formation started in our solar system.
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Yes there is randomness in the procedural generation of terrain both in computer programs and in the creation of the earth. Quantum physics to introduce random factors not determined by preceding conditions and chaotic dynamics to selectively amplify some of these to macroscopic proportions. And we can find the result beautiful in both cases.
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In reslity what happens is
This is our best guess (theory) and that will be correct unless or until we think of something better.
Richard
That applies to evolutionary algorithms too. The most efficient evolutionary algorithm will be one that takes advantage of the structure of the problem.
I’ll drop this in as a counter-example where evolutionary algorithms are far more efficient than alternative approaches.
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Yes that is what the preachers and theologians do, searching for Bible passages to justify themselves. In science we do something quite different: hypothesis, test, accept the results of the test (you have been given a more detailed diagram of this). But it is true that unlike those preachers and theologians, science is open to improving explanations with more details added to the hypotheses and tests. But the evidence (test results) never changes and so conclusions remain valid even when more details are added.
General relativity for example does not overthrow Newton. One of the first tests of the theory is to show that it gives the same results in conditions under which the previous theory was tested.
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You didn’t take all the appropriate exams. You don’t, for instance, have a degree in natural science that included evolution. IIRC the courses you did take didn’t cover this topic.
Taxonomically, its that the definition of what constitutes a bird is “characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton.”
But less tautologically, mammals don’t grow feathers because the split between the lineage that led to mammals and the lineage that led to birds happened long before feathers evolved. Mammals could evolve features similar to feathers, but for them to evolve actual feathers would require either transfer of the genes for feathers across the bird/mammal split, which can’t happen without genetic engineering because they’re not interfertile, or an incredibly unlikely series of genetic coincidences whereby the same genes evolve in mammals from a different starting point and in different environments. Which given the possible number of ways in which mammalscould evolve, is astronomically unlikely.
Basically, yes. The genes for feathers arose in the lineage that led to birds (and some other creatures which have since died out) and no non-birds have them.
It’s a valid question, but a fairly basic one.
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I am sorry but that does not actually answer the question.
It is all very well to say that they are there because they are in that lineage, but it doesn’t answer the why, in terms of why those components could not (did not) occur in other lineages.
If the deviations are random, why could they not occur in other genomes? Unless deviations can only occur within the limits of a genome and any element that is not in that genome cannot suddenly appear, but that produces supplementary problems as to how any new element could occur.
(and statistics is not a valid answer. Statistical probability of two random numbers being the same must have a positive value otherwise there would be no point in doing a “lucky Dip”, or even just picking numbers out of your head. In fact any method of choosing is basically random in the broadest sense of the word, because birthdays are not controlled, nor special days, nor favorite numbers. They are all basically random, and have no more or less likelihood of occurring than any other combination)
Richard
PS
Thanks again for not just dismissing me.
Yes!
I get so tired of people saying, “Einstein proved Newton wrong”.
“Astronomically” is insufficient; the odds are (I tried the math again) on the order of one in 10^{900}, a number bigger than the number of seconds in the age of the universe multiplied by the number of particles in the universe. “Cosmologically” is thus also insufficient!
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Because of probability. The odds of just one of the required mutation occurring in just the right place is on the order of one in 10^{85}. If there are say a dozen mutations required then it is one in 10^{{85}^{12}} or about one in 10^{900}. That number is large enough that if every second of the universe’s existence every particle in the universe was counted it would be a tiny fraction of the total.
So yes, statistics is a valid answer.
You mean like a lottery? The odds aren’t even comparable. You’d be more likely to get blindfolded and drop a single grain of sand on a beach, get spun around thrice, the bend over and pick up that exact grain of sand than for even two of the needed mutations to occur in order. If every human being alive picked a number every second of their life, the odds of the right number coming up would still be little different from zero.
As I’ve noted, the odds against a given set of mutations occurring (without others popping in and ruining it) twice is so far beyond astronomical that even “cosmological” doesn’t do it justice. If every particle in the universe drew one random number in the size of set we’re looking at, every second for the age of the universe, the odds of getting a winning ticket would still essentially be zero. In other words, as someone pointed out earlier, the only way for it to happen would be divine intervention.
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And you know as well as I that statistics and odds are irrelevant. These things exist, so if it is not by the hand of God then whatever the statistics involved, it still happened and no statistic will ever convince me that something is “impossible” not to be repeated. There are so many examples of things beating the odds. If it happens once it can happen again, especially if there is an unidentified bias involved.
Statistics and probability have their place, but not in this instance .I wonder what the odds are of a set of numbers repeating in the Lottery, or a person winning more than once. Or maybe two lottery draws from two different machines producing the same results. Statistically and / or in reality.
So you just ignore the rest, brilliant.
IOW you are right regardless of any argument to the contrary. Typical!
Richard
There are no examples of things beating such odds. That’s why I gave the comparisons, to show the ridiculous improbability.
Here’s another illustration: the odds of feathers developing again in a different lineage is like flipping a coin three thousand times and getting heads every single time . . . or like buying 500 decks of cards, shuffling every deck thoroughly, then finding the queen of hearts as the top card on every single deck . . . or rolling two dice and getting a total of seven 1200 times in a row . . .
What “unidentified bias”? It’s already been made clear that the only way to get the same series of mutations twice is divine intervention; the universe isn’t old enough for it to happen twice.
A typical lottery has odds of hitting all the numbers on the order of one in 10^6; Oregon’s Megabucks is about one in six million.
Compared to the odds of a set of specific mutations occurring again that is almost a certain bet.
Using the above, it would be on the order of one in 10^{12}, i.e. one in a trillion.
You haven’t given an argument to the contrary, just hand-waving and talking about lotteries.
Compared to the chance of a repeated set of a dozen or so specific mutations, the chance of winning the Powerball lottery in the U.S. may as well be a sure thing – it’s like the same numbers winning the Powerball over a hundred times in a row. So invoking a lottery isn’t an argument, it’s an expression of failure to understand what’s involved.
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There is, I have been given to understand, something wrong with applying probabilities after the fact. If you examine a deck of cards, it will turn out that it has a particular order of the cards. One is tempted to say that the probability of that order is 1 out of a very large number. (I think that it is about 8x10^67).
And then there is, I believe, the question of multiple universes. Maybe, an infinity of them, with every possibility occurs in one of them.
There are none so blind, as those who will not see.
Don’t bother
The one you claim to believe but refuse to acknowledge
“It’s not science.”
As usual, if is not how you understand it, or using examples you accept, it is rubbish.
“You do not understand Statistics?”
How did i know you were going to say that!
(Ihadn’t actually looked when I wrote the "quote1 above.
IOW You will believe what you want to beleive, and not accept a single thing that i say or show.
Fine
Don’t bother to answer. I couldn’t give a… (swearing is against my beliefs.)
Richard
Hand-waving. Show me an example of something that beats one in 10^{900}.
Again you choose the YEC route: ignore what doesn’t fit your dogma.
I’m trying to help you understand that your comprehension is severely deficient by helping see the reality – and you choose to ignore reality.
Most of what you say when you claim to talk about science isn’t science – that’s just the truth.
But that’s not what you were talking about – you were saying that there’s some “unidentified bias” influencing how evolution works, and you did so in a scientific context, so the proper response is to ask what bias you mean – which includes showing scientifically what is being missed.
You seem to want to talk about science without talking about science, kind of like criticizing a highway engineer without even knowing how to pour concrete.
No, as usual, you want to make scientific statements while rejecting science.
I don’t know how to make it any simpler than my baking illustration: you don’t criticize a desert to the chef who made it without knowing anything about baking, just as you don’t criticize an auto mechanic’s work without knowing about auto mechanics. If you’re discussing things in field X, you use the terminology and methods of field X – anything else is just being an annoying busybody.
You plainly don’t given that you compare the chance of a given set of mutations occurring a second time to a lottery.
I and others will accept things that make sense. But your approach is to deny scientific method, deny mathematics . . . basically use the YEC approach of “It doesn’t make sense to me so I will make up what I want and insist it is scientific”.
So, plainly, is rational thinking. Your approach is no different than a guy telling a professional house painter that he’s doing it wrong when you know nothing about paints or surfaces or preparation, you just have an opinion.
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Theories aren’t guesses. Theories need to explain the data. At the same time, all scientists understand that all theories are incomplete, oversimplified, and wrong on some level. As the saying goes, all theories are wrong but some are useful. If you aren’t comfortable with not having ultimate, 100% true answers then science isn’t for you. The best any human can do is have an explanation that explains nearly all of the data.
It is also worth mentioning once again that you don’t seem to have a problem with accepting hundreds of scientific theories, even though they have these flaws. For example, I’m sure you have no problem accepting the Germ Theory of Disease (which you would call a guess).
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Since you like analogies . . .
Take 1 million Latin speakers from 200 BC Rome. Split them into two groups and send them to two different planets where they are incapable of communicating with each other. Come back in 5,000 years. After 5,000 years, chances are they will no longer be speaking Latin as it was understood 5,000 years ago. More importantly, the two populations are speaking completely different languages, and they can’t understand one another. This is essentially what happened with the Romance languages. Better yet, what would be the chances that either of the populations will be speaking perfect modern French? Probably zero, right?
The common ancestor of mammals and birds was the common ancestor of mammals and reptiles (using the colloquial categories). Mammals and the dinosaurs that led to birds were more distantly related than even the Romance Languages. For the same reason we wouldn’t expect a French speaking population to evolve English on their own, we also wouldn’t expect mammals to evolve feathers. The dinosaur genome that gave rise to the bird lineage was very different than the mammal genomes. There were no mutations that could give rise to feathers in mammals in the same way it gave rise to feathers in dinosaurs because their genomes were way different.
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Then why do you ask for explanations that you have sworn not to accept?
In the case of mammals evolving feathers, we are talking about hundreds of millions of mutations that would just happen to exactly reconstruct the genome of the dinosaurs that gave rise to birds. That’s a number of with more than a thousand of zeros after it. It is much more likely that mammals would evolve something unique to them that only takes a few mutations which is exactly what they did when they evolved hair.
To use another example, what are the chances that you and one of your siblings would have the exact same genome without being maternal twins? First, let’s look at just the 70 substitution mutations that each of you would acquire. Each mutation has a probability of 1 in 6 billion, so 70 of the exact mutations would be 6 billion to the 70th power, or 2.955e+684. That’s a 2 with 684 zeros after it. Then there is the odds you would get the same half of each pair of chromosomes, so 2^23 power. Then there is the odds of crossovers happening at the same place, so that is something like 56 crossovers amongst thousands and thousands of recombination hotpsots. Another big number. Multiply those all together and those are the chances two independent births will have the same genome.
In other words, the randomness of heredity and mutations will guarantee that genomes will be unique throughout history which is why the same DNA and same adaptations do not happen twice in different lineages.
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