[_ Old Earth _] Information: What Does It Mean to Evolution?

[Barbarian]

Pizza Guy's question about mutation and information got me thinking. I spent several years working in systems (mostly biological) and considering the issue of general information in populations.

I think few people really understand what information is. Supposedly, Claude Shannon was told to call his measure of message content "information" because "nobody knows what information is."

So let's begin. Keep in mind, there are other theories of information, but it is Shannon's that actually works. The internet would not function without his theory, nor would we be able to communicate across billions of kilometers of space with very low-powered transmitters without his discoveries.

Let's take a look...

Information theory is based on probability theory and statistics. The most important quantities of information are entropy, the information in a random variable, and mutual information, the amount of information in common between two random variables. The former quantity indicates how easily message data can be compressed while the latter can be used to find the communication rate across a channel.

"Entropy", in this case, is the uncertainty of a message. That is, the number of possible states for the message. (bear with me here) If we absolutely know what the message will say, then the entropy will be zero. For example, if a program would always output "Hello, world", the entropy would be zero. On the other hand, if you had a generator that would randomly output letters, then the entropy would be quite high.

If we instead used phenomes (groupings of letters that make specific sounds in English) then the entropy will be lower, since the likelihood of a following letter is somewhat determined by the previous letters.

We can go up to random words, and then random words in the frequency we see in English, and then random words by the probability of following the previous word. All of which decrease intropy. And BTW, decrease information.

What? Yep. A message with low entropy is going to have less information, since you'll learn less when it gets there, than if you couldn't anticipate it at all.

The entropy of a message (or of the gene pool of a population of organisms) is:

In the case of population genetics, the entropy (H) is found by multiplying the frequency of each allele by the log of the frequency of that allele, and then summing the result for all alleles in the population. And then change the value to a negative.

Suppose there is only one allele:

Then 1.0 X log(1.0) = 1.0 X 0.0 = 0 No information, since we will learn nothing by determining the alllele of an individual.

Suppose there are two alleles, each 50 percent of the population.

0.5 X log(0.5) is about -0.15, changing the sign, we get 0.15. More information, but not a lot more. Each new allele will increase information.

So any new mutation in a population will increase information, not reduce it.
I'll pause for comments.

 

[Vaccine]

Suppose there is only one allele:

Then 1.0 X log(1.0) = 1.0 X 0.0 = 0 No information, since we will learn nothing by determining the alllele of an individual.

Suppose there are two alleles, each 50 percent of the population.

0.5 X log(0.5) is about -0.15, changing the sign, we get 0.15. More information, but not a lot more. Each new allele will increase information.

Maybe there's something I'm missing but it seems to me in that example, one has nothing to do with the other.

True: 1 allele = 0 information to us
False: 1 allele = 0 informstion to a cell

1 allele IS some information to a cell.
Our understanding of 1 byte might be 00010100 = 10, which is of no use to us. To a machine that 1 byte could be represent a character, a command, or a checksum.
I don't see a correlation between our understanding of 1 allele and a cell's understanding of 1 allle.

So any new mutation in a population will increase information, not reduce it.
I'll pause for comments.

It may increase the information, but a new mutation is only corrupting the data. Those defects account for over 1500 genetic diseases in humans alone.

 

[Barbarian]

Maybe there's something I'm missing but it seems to me in that example, one has nothing to do with the other.

True: 1 allele = 0 information to us
False: 1 allele = 0 informstion to a cell

But remember, evolution only applies to populations. And what happens to an individual can be good or bad for an individual, but still be something else for the population. It's like saying printing one more copy of a book adds information. Well it does for that book you just printed. But not for the book as we usually define it.

Our understanding of 1 byte might be 00010100 = 10, which is of no use to us. To a machine that 1 byte could be represent a character, a command, or a checksum.
I don't see a correlation between our understanding of 1 allele and a cell's understanding of 1 allle.

The remarkable thing about Shannon's theorem is that it is context-independent. It works on all of those.

Barbarian observes:
So any new mutation in a population will increase information, not reduce it.
I'll pause for comments.

It may increase the information, but a new mutation is only corrupting the data.

Only if you assume that the data is perfect as it is. In fact, mutations normally have no measurable effect on the organism. A few are harmful. A very few are useful. Natural selection sorts them out, but all of them increase information.

Those defects account for over 1500 genetic diseases in humans alone.

All of us have a good number of harmful recessives. Unless you marry a close relative, it's not public health concern, although as you suggest, rarely two distantly-related people marry and have the same harmful recessives. But it's always rare enough in a population as to be negligible. Why is it so?
Evolution. If a harmful mutation wasn't recessive, it would be removed by natural selection. If a harmful recessive becomes fairly common, then the disorder will appear more frequently, and a larger proportion of the individuals having it will be removed, reducing it to a lower level.

Consider the sickle cell allele. When a person has two copies of the allele that person is seriously ill, and normally dies in childhood. But, the allele is maintained at a fairly high level in areas that have endemic malaria. Malaria is such a terrible disease that it would debilitate or kill the majority of people in some areas of West Africa were it not for the Hbs allele, which provides pretty good protection for the disease. Good enough that a family where both parents have one Hbs allele can expect more of their children to grow into adulthood, and more of them to be strong and self-supporting people, than people without the allele. And we have seen, in Americans of West African ancestry, a reduction in this allele over time.

This will cause a decrease in information for the population, but it is a good thing, and fitness will increase as a result. (Remember, fitness counts only in terms of the envirionment) Sometimes an increase in fitness is the result of an increase in information. Sometimes, it's by a decrease.

 

[Sparkey]

"Entropy", in this case, is the uncertainty of a message. That is, the number of possible states for the message. (bear with me here) If we absolutely know what the message will say, then the entropy will be zero. For example, if a program would always output "Hello, world", the entropy would be zero. On the other hand, if you had a generator that would randomly output letters, then the entropy would be quite high.

With entropy as high as this, the analogy of monkeys typing randomly to produce a sonnet comes to mind.

We can go up to random words,

In our mental experiment here, sure. We already know what words are. Easy for us to imagine them into actuality because they exist. But starting from scratch? I dunno. I can't.

What? Yep. A message with low entropy is going to have less information, since you'll learn less when it gets there, than if you couldn't anticipate it at all.

You'll have to slow down for a minute there for my sake. I was following along with the analogy of letters, be they random or not, and understood how high entropy exerted its influence on meaning. Then I understood you to continue your explanation saying that some letters just naturally go together. Like when we see a 'S' we can understand that it is more frequently followed by a 'CH' as in school or other words than it would be followed by a 'Z' as in szechophrenic.

So, some groupings go together in a more natural manner than others. But then... when you say that the grouped letters that express words contain LESS information (message) than the random, I have to say, "Wait just a second now..." What if I typed a bunch of random letters here, would you understand me? I think no.

Before we get to the math, let me say that I do appreciate your analogy and effort expended translating into something that I can grasp but it lets me down. Thanks for the pause:

I'll pause for comments.

 

[Asyncritus]

Mutations, as we all know, scramble the letters in the DNA.

I have yet to hear of a mutation doing something evolutionarily significant.

So if we had an explosion in the printing press, resulting in the scrambling of the type and the typefaces, but the print run still continued, I would say that that book would surely become useless.

The entropy would become remarkably high at a blow.

So far from resulting in the increase of information in the system, it would result in the exact opposite.

So if we started with the original amount of useful information I(o), and the damaged pages contained I(d) useless information, then the remaining information I(r) is given by the equation

I(r) = I(o) - I(d)

That is, there must be a net loss of useful information to the system.
​

 

[Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
"Entropy", in this case, is the uncertainty of a message. That is, the number of possible states for the message. (bear with me here) If we absolutely know what the message will say, then the entropy will be zero. For example, if a program would always output "Hello, world", the entropy would be zero. On the other hand, if you had a generator that would randomly output letters, then the entropy would be quite high.

With entropy as high as this, the analogy of monkeys typing randomly to produce a sonnet comes to mind.

The point is that chemistry is not random, and natural selection, once living things appeared, is the antithesis of randomness. The point, as you see, is that "information" is really not an issue at all for evolution, since:

1. Any new mutation in a population produces new information.
2. Some increases in fitness come via increases in information, and others come via decreases.

We can go up to random words,

In our mental experiment here, sure. We already know what words are.

So something that didn't know what words were, couldn't produce any? That isn't true.
edited

You'll have to slow down for a minute there for my sake. I was following along with the analogy of letters, be they random or not, and understood how high entropy exerted its influence on meaning. Then I understood you to continue your explanation saying that some letters just naturally go together. Like when we see a 'S' we can understand that it is more frequently followed by a 'CH' as in school or other words than it would be followed by a 'Z' as in szechophrenic.

Don't get too set on information only being part of language. Rather language is a small part of information.

So, some groupings go together in a more natural manner than others. But then... when you say that the grouped letters that express words contain LESS information (message) than the random, I have to say, "Wait just a second now..." What if I typed a bunch of random letters here, would you understand me? I think no.

More to the point, when I got your message, I'd have gained much more information about your message, than if it was in faultless English. Hence, more information. You see, information is essentially the reduction in uncertainty of a message, and human language is massively redundant (and hence has less information than random letters).

If you doubt this, think about the minimum number of bits you'd need to code language into digital, compared to gibberish. Gibberish takes more. Kn yu nderstnd ths? Such compression still carries all of the meaning for most people, but gibberish, of course, would have to be completely uncompressed to be properly communicated.

And your thanks are quite welcome. I'm hoping we can keep this one on a less emotional level (not between you and me, of course).

 

[Barbarian]

Mutations, as we all know, scramble the letters in the DNA.

That's a common misconception. In truth, they can do all sorts of things. The simplest just insert a different base into the strand, which doesn't "scramble" anything at all. A slight change, which normally has no detectable effects.

I have yet to hear of a mutation doing something evolutionarily significant.

The frameshift mutation that produced a bacterium capable of degrading nylon chemical bonds, which bacteriologists thought would take thousands of years at least. We know it's an evolutionarily significant change, since nylon didn't even exist a hundred years ago.

The broken vitamin C gene in humans. It ties us to a diet rich in vitamin C, which greatly increases the effects of famine, and made large scale human population dependent on the technology of farming. We took a different road because of it. Huge issue, that.

The Pax6 gene mutation in humans that makes our cerebral cortex form more cells, and richer connections than the gene does in other primates. Pretty significant, I'd think.

The Milano mutation that provides nearly complete immunity to arteriosclerosis.

Sickle cell mutation, that provides excellent immunity against malaria to heterozygotes, so benificial that heterozygotes have more children survive to healthy adulthood in malarial areas than homozygotes for normal hemoglobin. There is a similar mutation in Southern Europe that provides a similar advantage evolutionarily. And there's a surprise beyond that, which we'll bring up in a bit.

Oh, yes, the LRP5 mutation that provides extremely dense and strong bones, with no detectable side effects. That one's certainly an evolutionary advance.

edited

So far from resulting in the increase of information in the system, it would result in the exact opposite.

Read my post again. It's mathematically demonstrable that any new mutation increases information in a population.

I(r) = I(o) - I(d)

That is, there must be a net loss of useful information to the system.

As you just learned, mutation will always produce information. As you see from the examples I cited, it can be useful or harmful. But as you know from previous discussions, most mutations are effectively neutral.

 

[Sparkey]

We can go up to random words,

In our mental experiment here, sure. We already know what words are.

So something that didn't know what words were, couldn't produce any? That isn't true.

Easy for us to imagine them into actuality because they exist. But starting from scratch? I dunno. I can't.

Do you think any other animal uses words?

I don't think we are talking about words here and would like to seek ageement with you that an analogy is useful to a point. Analogies, by their very definition line up in some points but not in every point. Here's the problem from another point of view:

I am borrowing the words of another author, about a completely different discussion but do so to illustrate my main point: The Limitations of the Analogy. Instead of words as descriptive forms, let's talk libraries. The quote was found by me at the suggestion of our friend, Async. I was clicking on links like I usually do, trying to glean what was being said by one of our Members here.

To understand the concept of higher levels of organization, I begin with a down-to-earth example of a public library. Simply speaking, the library is composed of collections of books (and other things), books are composed of chapters, chapters are composed of paragraphs, paragraphs are composed of sentences, sentences are composed of words (and punctuation), words are composed of letters of the alphabet, letters of the alphabet are composed of ink on paper.

I gave a description of books basically in terms of what is printed. But even beyond that description, how can we describe the notion of books without the notion of themes and ideas? These are also higher levels of organization, and these levels of organization are especially problematic for materialists.

Does it make sense to try to fully understand a library by studying the alphabet? Of course not. Does it make sense to describe the contents of books, their origin and evolution, in terms of the dynamics of how ink is put on paper? Of course not. Pigliucci is subtly criticizing Lynch for making comparable errors in Lynch’s view of evolution.

Read more at: Darwinism is a Caricature of Evolutionary Biology found under the section title "Uncommon Descent" previously quoted

 

[Vaccine]

Kn yu nderstnd ths?

That kind of mutation in DNA would result in self sterilization of that cell.

The frameshift mutation that produced a bacterium capable of degrading nylon chemical bonds, which bacteriologists thought would take thousands of years at least. We know it's an evolutionarily significant change, since nylon didn't even exist a hundred years ago.

There was a loss of function with that mutation.

The broken vitamin C gene in humans. It ties us to a diet rich in vitamin C, which greatly increases the effects of famine, and made large scale human population dependent on the technology of farming. We took a different road because of it. Huge issue, that.

"loss of function" with that too.

The Pax6 gene mutation in humans that makes our cerebral cortex form more cells, and richer connections than the gene does in other primates. Pretty significant, I'd think.

Pax6 mutation causes congenital eye defects and glucose intolerance.

The Milano mutation that provides nearly complete immunity to arteriosclerosis.

“These observations should not be attributed to the presence of an apparently protective gene”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...00162-0037.pdf

It also causes increase in the bad cholesterol and decrease in the good cholesterol.

Sickle cell mutation, that provides excellent immunity against malaria to heterozygotes, so benificial that heterozygotes have more children survive to healthy adulthood in malarial areas than homozygotes for normal hemoglobin. There is a similar mutation in Southern Europe that provides a similar advantage evolutionarily. And there's a surprise beyond that, which we'll bring up in a bit.

Sickle cell is a disease with health risks, maybe not as harmful as Hbs but diseases are not beneficial.

Oh, yes, the LRP5 mutation that provides extremely dense and strong bones, with no detectable side effects. That one's certainly an evolutionary advance.

LRP5 is linked to Osteoporosis in children.

In order to be called "an evolutionary advance" it would have to qualify as a "gain of function" mutation. "Loss of function" mutations or diseases are not advances.

As you just learned, mutation will always produce information.

Yes, but what kind of information, specified or unspecified? Information useful to a cell has to be complex and specified.

I(r) = I(o) - I(d)

Hey Async, was that a joke?

I LoL'd ??

 

[Barbarian]

Barbarian explains why redundancy increases understanding, while lowering information:
Kn yu nderstnd ths?

That kind of mutation in DNA

In fact, we often see reduction in redundancy in DNA strands.

would result in self sterilization of that cell.

Nope. It could happen, but most often does not.

Barbarian observes:
The frameshift mutation that produced a bacterium capable of degrading nylon chemical bonds, which bacteriologists thought would take thousands of years at least. We know it's an evolutionarily significant change, since nylon didn't even exist a hundred years ago.

There was a loss of function with that mutation.

Nope. It occured on a plasmid, so it wasn't even an essential part of the genome. Highly unlikely that a frameshift could have been effective if it wasn't on a plasmid. You've been misled on that one. All the existing functions of the species continued; they just got an extra one.

Barbarian observes:
The broken vitamin C gene in humans. It ties us to a diet rich in vitamin C, which greatly increases the effects of famine, and made large scale human population dependent on the technology of farming. We took a different road because of it. Huge issue, that.

"loss of function" with that too.

Major evolutionary changes often involve a loss of some sort of function, as new ones are gained. Birds, for example, lost the function of hands, flexible spines, and balancing tails. But it worked out well for them. The "loss of function" defense is based on an ignorance of the way evolution works.

Barbarian observes:
The Pax6 gene mutation in humans that makes our cerebral cortex form more cells, and richer connections than the gene does in other primates. Pretty significant, I'd think.

Pax6 mutation causes congenital eye defects and glucose intolerance.

Some do. But not the one that lead to a larger and more effective brain. Pax6 is has a lot of mutations. One lead to us becoming human. Pax6 is a gene, not a specific mutation.

The Milano mutation that provides nearly complete immunity to arteriosclerosis.

“These observations should not be attributed to the presence of an apparently protective gene”


edited Here's what NIH actually says:
Am J Hum Genet. 1985 November; 37(6): 1083–1097.
PMCID: PMC1684746
AIMilano apoprotein identification of the complete kindred and evidence of a dominant genetic transmission.

The AIMilano apoprotein variant is associated with a marked reduction of high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels and with increased triglyceridemia. In spite of the low HDL-cholesterol (HDL-Ch), carriers do not generally show clinical signs of atherosclerosis. The biochemical disorder is linked to a molecular change in apoprotein AI, that is, an arg----cys substitution in the 173 position, thus allowing the formation of AIMilano-AIMilano dimers and AIMilano-AII complexes. The origin of the variant gene has been located in Limone sul Garda, a small community in Northern Italy (about 1,000 individuals). This community has a genetic, biochemical, and clinical individuality, consequent to its isolation up to a few years ago; the citizens show highly uniform alimentary habits and elevated consanguinity. The complete population of the small village was sampled, and, by the use of an analytical isoelectric focusing technique for the detection of the mutant, a total of 33 living carriers, ranging in age from 2 to 81 yrs, were identified. Analysis of the genealogic tree of the complete family groups showed that the apoprotein (apo) AIMilano is transmitted as an autosomal dominant trait, all carriers coming from a single mating couple, living in the eighteenth century. The carriers are heterozygous for the apoprotein variant.

It's at the NIH website:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1684746/?log$=activity

It also causes increase in the bad cholesterol and decrease in the good cholesterol.

See the part highlighted in red. Does this give you some idea of the way professional creationists lie by telling a piece of the truth?

Barbarian observes:
Sickle cell mutation, that provides excellent immunity against malaria to heterozygotes, so benificial that heterozygotes have more children survive to healthy adulthood in malarial areas than homozygotes for normal hemoglobin. There is a similar mutation in Southern Europe that provides a similar advantage evolutionarily. And there's a surprise beyond that, which we'll bring up in a bit.

Sickle cell is a disease with health risks, maybe not as harmful as Hbs but diseases are not beneficial.

It's beneficial enough to have more of your children survive to adulthood (and thus likely to reproduce) that the trait has expanded to cover pretty much all of the African malaria belt. It's declining in frequency among people of West African descent in the United States, because it's not an advantageous trait in the absence of malaria. But it made those areas inhabitable for humans.

Barbarian observes:
Oh, yes, the LRP5 mutation that provides extremely dense and strong bones, with no detectable side effects. That one's certainly an evolutionary advance.

LRP5 is linked to Osteoporosis in children.

No. Again, the LRP5 gene is a gene, not a mutation. There are a number of known mutations to the gene, one of which produces unusually strong and sturdy bones.

In order to be called "an evolutionary advance" it would have to qualify as a "gain of function" mutation.

I would think sturdier bones would certainly qualify, as would "ability to live in malaria areas."

"Loss of function" mutations or diseases are not advances.

And I think you see the error in your assumption on that.

Barabarian obeserves:
As you just learned, mutation will always produce information.

Yes, but what kind of information, specified or unspecified?

"Specified information" is finding an arrow in a tree, drawing a bull-eye around it, and touting the accuracy. When they do it before the arrow gets there, I'll be impressed. Otherwise, it's just another "just so" story by creationists.

Information useful to a cell has to be complex and specified.

Show us that. With the calculations.

Not with foolishness like this:

I(r) = I(o) - I(d)

Hey Async, was that a joke?

Yep.

 

[Barbarian]

Barbarian, regarding the idea that mutations "Scramble" genetic information:
That's a common misconception. In truth, they can do all sorts of things. The simplest just insert a different base into the strand, which doesn't "scramble" anything at all. A slight change, which normally has no detectable effects.

Hmmm.....

(picture of head of a fly in which the repressor genes preventing the formation of legs in some segments, are removed)

Occasionally, a gene does something else. But here, it recovered a lost feature, formerly repressed by a mutation. That was old information, there all the time, but repressed by a mutation. That repressor was removed, and the information was then expressed. EDITED

The frameshift mutation that produced a bacterium capable of degrading nylon chemical bonds, which bacteriologists thought would take thousands of years at least. We know it's an evolutionarily significant change, since nylon didn't even exist a hundred years ago.

It doesn't produce even a new species of bacterium.

Major new event in the evolution of life. A synthetic chemical bond is now degradable by bacteria.

So how is this evolutionarily significant in terms of the Cambrian Explosion?

It happened a lot faster, but of course, there were many evolutionary events during the Cambrian, which lasted many millions of years.

The broken vitamin C gene in humans. It ties us to a diet rich in vitamin C, which greatly increases the effects of famine, and made large scale human population dependent on the technology of farming. We took a different road because of it. Huge issue, that.

It is a huge issue,that. But again:
It doesn't produce even a new variety of human.

But it did. It requires us to find a constant supply of vitamin C, in the absence of forests (which were becoming fewer and smaller at the time. Behavior changes driven by that fact led to us.

So how is this evolutionarily significant in terms of the Cambrian Explosion?

Again, a bit faster, and of course, humans represent a major new step in evolutionary development.

The Pax6 gene mutation in humans that makes our cerebral cortex form more cells, and richer connections than the gene does in other primates. Pretty significant, I'd think.

It doesn't produce even a new variety of human.

A new genus, to be precise. It is why our brains get bigger and better. And in the fossil record we see it happening.

So how is this evolutionarily significant in terms of the Cambrian Explosion?

The advent of humans is of huge ecological significance in the world.

The Milano mutation that provides nearly complete immunity to arteriosclerosis.

It doesn't produce even a new variety of human.

A new variety that is almost immune to a serious disease.

So how is this evolutionarily significant in terms of the Cambrian Explosion?

Increased fitness for the most important living vertebrate.

Sickle cell mutation, that provides excellent immunity against malaria to heterozygotes, so benificial that heterozygotes have more children survive to healthy adulthood in malarial areas than homozygotes for normal hemoglobin. There is a similar mutation in Southern Europe that provides a similar advantage evolutionarily. And there's a surprise beyond that, which we'll bring up in a bit.

It doesn't produce even a new variety of human.

Evolutionary steps don't always produce speciation. If you want to know about some observed specieations, we can do that, but of course, the question was about some important evolutionary events.
EDITED

Oh, yes, the LRP5 mutation that provides extremely dense and strong bones, with no detectable side effects. That one's certainly an evolutionary advance.

It doesn't produce even a new variety of human.

A new variety, much more resistant to impact damage. Significant.

Async's concept of mutation:

So if we had an explosion in the printing press, resulting in the scrambling of the type and the typefaces, but the print run still continued, I would say that that book would surely become useless.

I'm surprised you've been here this long, and still believe mutations work like that.

I'm surprised that you've been here that long and still cling to these insignificances as proof that evolution did occur

By definition, it does. Evolution, as several people have reminded you, is a change in allele frequency in a population.

it terms of accounting for the vast variety of plants and animals.

That would be in genetic analyses, the great number of transitional forms, both living and fossilized, and in the nested hierarchy of living things, something only found in cases of common descent.

EDITED

So far from resulting in the increase of information in the system, it would result in the exact opposite.

Barbarian chuckles:
Read my post again. It's mathematically demonstrable that any new mutation increases information in a population.

EDITED My little equation above shows this clearly.

Here's the deal; Shannon's equation tells us how to make the internet work, how to communicate over vast distances with great reliability in space, and how biological information increases with mutation.

Yours is just something someone posted on the internet, and doesn't do anything.

Not much of a choice, is it?

That is, there must be a net loss of useful information to the system.

As you see, you've lost that one. Mutation will always produce information. As you see from the examples I cited, it can be useful or harmful. But as you know from previous discussions, most mutations are effectively neutral.

It may produce 'information' but that's not what's needed.

As you see from the discussion, it's all that evolution needs. EDITED

If scrambling the DNA

EDITED that's not what happens, so it's a moot point.

equals increasing 'useful information', then you've got a really odd definition of 'useful information'.

Shannon's equation doesn't even consider the message. Ironically, that's why it works for non-designed things like biology.

And don't forget the big picture:EDITED of the zillion new species of the Cambrian Explosion

You've already been reminded that it's an artifact of the evolution of hard body parts, a process that you discovered had already begun in the Precambrian.

not to mention the bats

You were surprised to learn that the predicted intermediate was found, and remarkably like the prediction.

the angiosperms

You might have missed the fact of a group of plants transitional between gymnosperms and angiosperms. EDITED

and a thousand other things.

Like the evolution of termites, and bird flight, EDITED

 

[Asyncritus]

Barbarian, regarding the idea that mutations "Scramble" genetic information:
That's a common misconception. In truth, they can do all sorts of things. The simplest just insert a different base into the strand, which doesn't "scramble" anything at all. A slight change, which normally has no detectable effects.

(picture of head of a fly in which the repressor genes preventing the formation of legs in some segments, are removed)

Occasionally, a gene does something else. But here, it recovered a lost feature, formerly repressed by a mutation. That was old information, there all the time, but repressed by a mutation. That repressor was removed, and the information was then expressed. EDITED

barbarian, please. Are you saying that at some time in the past, these flies had legs sticking out of their eyes? The gene for-eye-sticking-out-of-head became suppressed, EDITED

But seriously, somatic mutations are meaningless in this discussion, because they only affect existing body parts.

Only mutations affecting the germ cells can be seriously considered. And as I have pointed out innumerable times, those mutations are invariably damaging.

Consider what happened with the massive radiation damage at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Chernobyl. Not a single beneficial mutation has been or can be claimed. Instead, we all know the destructive results.

T H Morgan's thousands of irradiation experiments produced nothing better than a few cross-eyed :crazy fruit flies with white eyes instead of red! Hardly a huge evolutionary advance.
EDITED

Major new event in the evolution of life. A synthetic chemical bond is now degradable by bacteria.

EDITEDNot a single new species - which as I have to remind you, is what evolution is looking for, to bolster its quite disastrous failure.

So how is this evolutionarily significant in terms of the Cambrian Explosion?

It happened a lot faster, but of course, there were many evolutionary events during the Cambrian, which lasted many millions of years.

I meant, and you know what I meant, that the Cambrian produced millions of new species in an extremely short time. One miserable example after who knows how many years, doesn't produce anything like the Cambrian explosion - or indeed the many others which came later.

No help there, I fear.

The broken vitamin C gene in humans.

This is regression, not evolutionary advance! Vitamin C is an extraordinarily useful metabolite, as Pauling, Rath and innumerable others have shown very clearly.

Loss of the ability to manufacture it is no progress at all. Sorry.

It ties us to a diet rich in vitamin C, which greatly increases the effects of famine, and made large scale human population dependent on the technology of farming. We took a different road because of it. Huge issue, that.

It is a huge issue,that. But again:

It doesn't produce even a new variety of human.

But it did. It requires us to find a constant supply of vitamin C, in the absence of forests (which were becoming fewer and smaller at the time. Behavior changes driven by that fact led to us.

Change in behaviour does not equal or create new species, either singly, or by the dozen. So we have human beings, normal human beings, running round the planet looking for and using many sources of vitamin C. EDITED

Behavior changes driven by that fact led to us.

And as you should know by now, behaviour changes don't affect the germ-cell DNA. So it 'didn't lead to us'.

So how is this evolutionarily significant in terms of the Cambrian Explosion?

Again, a bit faster, and of course, humans represent a major new step in evolutionary development.

Again, I'm talking numerically, here. The odd miserable few possible examples cannot possible generate as much change and innovation as seen in the Cambrian, and afterwards. No, not ever. Failed again, I see.

The Pax6 gene mutation in humans that makes our cerebral cortex form more cells, and richer connections than the gene does in other primates. Pretty significant, I'd think.

Pax6 gene mutations are well known to cause some serious conditions, especially in the eyes, but with other consequent effects. None good.

So EDITED which mutation you have in mind, and what is the evdence for its having occurred. Thanks.

A new genus, to be precise. It is why our brains get bigger and better. And in the fossil record we see it happening.

Just BTW, did you know Albert Einstein had a brain 10% SMALLER than the average?

You really have never seriously considered the impossibilities of humans having evolved from chimpanzees or a 'common ancestor', have you? Let me direct you to the co-founder of the evolution theory, Alfred Russell Wallace, who abandoned the theory, largely because he could see the impossibilities involved, EDITED.

Here's the link you might like to look at:
http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S146.htm
Sir Charles Lyell on Geological Climates and the Origin of Species, where Wallace says:

But the moral and higher intellectual nature of man is as unique a phenomenon as was conscious life on its first appearance in the world, and the one is almost as difficult to conceive as originating by any law of evolution as the other. We may even go further, and maintain that there are certain purely physical characteristics of the human race which are not explicable on the theory of variation and survival of the fittest. The brain, the organs of speech, the hand, and the external form of man, offer some special difficulties in this respect, to which we will briefly direct attention.

I really and strongly suggest that you look at that article. Coming as it does, from the co-founder of the theory of evolution, who rejected it outright, it is a very profitable exercise to consider the reasons for his rejection and abandonment of it.

I won't copy and paste huge slabs of the text EDITED, but merely suggest that you read it for yourself.

So how is this evolutionarily significant in terms of the Cambrian Explosion?

The advent of humans is of huge ecological significance in the world.

The Milano mutation that provides nearly complete immunity to arteriosclerosis.

It doesn't produce even a new variety of human.

A new variety that is almost immune to a serious disease.

So how is this evolutionarily significant in terms of the Cambrian Explosion?

Increased fitness for the most important living vertebrate.

Sickle cell mutation, that provides excellent immunity against malaria to heterozygotes, so benificial that heterozygotes have more children survive to healthy adulthood in malarial areas than homozygotes for normal hemoglobin. There is a similar mutation in Southern Europe that provides a similar advantage evolutionarily. And there's a surprise beyond that, which we'll bring up in a bit.

It doesn't produce even a new variety of human.

Evolutionary steps don't always produce speciation.

You're right, there!

If you want to know about some observed speciations, we can do that, but of course, the question was about some important evolutionary events.
You seem to have lost focus.

Hardly. We are looking for a theory that accounts for the 'Origin of Species by Natural Selection'.EDITED

Till now I haven't seen you produce a single unquestioned example of this happening, and I have raised very many significant impossibilities for which the theory cannot account.

Time to walk away from it - especially as Kimura, Lynch, Kingsolver, Koonin and many others are reporting severe doubts and questioning of the ability and/ or necessity of natural selection to produce the changes necessary to account for the gigantic number of extant and extinct species on the planet.

Oh, yes, the LRP5 mutation that provides extremely dense and strong bones, with no detectable side effects. That one's certainly an evolutionary advance.

It doesn't produce even a new variety of human.

A new variety, much more resistant to impact damage. Significant.

But not in the context of this discussion. It may have some value in those societies where they progress by beating each other over the head with clubs, I suppose - but acromegaly does much the same thing, and nobody claimsthat these unfortunates with beetling brows and prominent facial bones are evolutionarily significant in any way at all.

So if we had an explosion in the printing press, resulting in the scrambling of the type and the typefaces, but the print run still continued, I would say that that book would surely become useless.

I'm surprised you've been here this long, and still believe mutations work like that.

I'm surprised that you've been here that long and still cling to these insignificances as proof that evolution did occur

By definition, it does. Evolution, as several people have reminded you, is a change in allele frequency in a population.

You keep on saying this. Let me remind you that ducking and weaving does not constitute any sort of answer to the questions being posed, and does in no way further the Great Founder's thesis: 'On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection'.

We are not looking for changes in gene frequency, we are looking for the origin of considerable numbers of new species!

Which, of course, we never see!

And of course, we need to expunge the 'natural selection' from that title, EDITED

 

[Barbarian]

EDITED

Insects, by anatomical and genetic data, evolved from simpler arthropods with lots of identical body segments. Over time, the number of segments were reduced, and some were specialized in a process called "tagmosis." EDITED Remember how the same genes that make legs in some segments, also make antennae, pedipalps, chelicerae, mandibles, etc? Still do. The thing is, if those newly evolved genes for antennae are suppressed, that doesn't mean the appendage will not form. It means it will form as it was in the past, as a limb.

The evolutionary process that creates tagmata by fusing and modifying segments is called tagmosis, which is an extreme form of heteronomy, mediated by Hox genes and the other developmental genes they influence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagmosis

EDITED

But seriously, somatic mutations are meaningless in this discussion, because they only affect existing body parts.

They aren't, of course, somatic mutations, or they wouldn't be passed on. Think.

EDITED

T H Morgan's thousands of irradiation experiments produced nothing better than a few cross-eyed fruit flies with white eyes instead of red! Hardly a huge evolutionary advance.

Morgan's methods could only locate gross deformities, which are harmful. But the hemoglobin variants, the gene for greater bone mass, the Milano mutation which prevents arteriosclerosis, and many other in humans alone show that you're completely wrong about favorable mutations.

EDITED

So how is this evolutionarily significant in terms of the Cambrian Explosion?

It happened a lot faster, but of course, there were many evolutionary events during the Cambrian, which lasted many millions of years.

I meant, and you know what I meant,

Yep. You wanted to compare a few decades to many millions of years. Didn't work. No help there, I fear. Let's move on...

The broken vitamin C gene in humans.

This is regression, not evolutionary advance!

EDITED, reduction in function is as common in successful evolutionary lines as addition of function. Birds, for example.

The loss of the vitamin C gene (because early primates had an excess of dietary vitamin C, so the loss didn't matter) ties us to a diet rich in vitamin C, which greatly increases the effects of famine, and made large scale human population dependent on the technology of farming. We took a different road because of it. Huge issue, that.

It doesn't produce even a new variety of human.

But it did. It requires us to find a constant supply of vitamin C, in the absence of forests (which were becoming fewer and smaller at the time. Behavior changes driven by that fact led to us.

Change in behaviour does not equal or create new species, either singly, or by the dozen.

In this case, it did. We are much different than the early species of hominins
EDITED.

And as you should know by now, behaviour changes don't affect the germ-cell DNA.

But it does lead to different selective pressures, and thus different changes in genome by natural selection.

So it 'didn't lead to us'.

And now, you see that it does.

So how is this evolutionarily significant in terms of the Cambrian Explosion?

In a few million years, we go from a somewhat arboreal, mostly vegetarian organism, to one that is almost exclusively terrestrial, hunting large game, doing agriculture, and eventually founds civilization. The most remarkable thing about the Cambrian, is that organisms finally developed fully-armored exoskeletons, which led to a great adaptive radiation at the base of the era. Second thing was the gradual evolution of eyes, appendages, and ecological specialization in trilobites. Both pretty remarkable but I think humans trump the Cambrian.

Again, a bit faster, and of course, humans represent a major new step in evolutionary development.

Again, I'm talking numerically, here.

Biggest evolutionary radiation I know about was after the lower Permian, when beetles appeared and produced millions of species we see today. Oh, and the flowering plants in the Creataceous. More species of them, than known species of Cambrian organisms.

Stuff like that.

The odd miserable few possible examples cannot possible generate as much change and innovation as seen in the Cambrian, and afterwards. No, not ever.

And once again, you are surprised. There are over 30,000 catalogued species of beetles in the United States and Canada, and that's a fraction of the number known in the Amazon. EDITED

Barbarian observes:
The Pax6 gene mutation in humans that makes our cerebral cortex form more cells, and richer connections than the gene does in other primates. Pretty significant, I'd think.

Pax6 gene mutations are well known to cause some serious conditions, especially in the eyes, but with other consequent effects. None good.

See above. The key mutation to the human Pax6 gene made our larger and more effective brains possible. "Pax6" is a Homobox gene, not a class of mutations.

EDITED which mutation you have in mind, and what is the evdence for its having occurred. Thanks.

Learn about it here:
In animals, the gene is known to play a role in the development of the eye and is seen in some neural cells. In the human cells used in the new Wisconsin study, Pax6 was observed in virtually all of the cells of the neuroectoderm. "The fact that Pax6 is uniformly expressed in all human neuroectoderm cells was a surprise," Zhang explains. "This is a phenomenon that is a departure from what we see in animals. It seems that in the earliest stages of development, human cells are regulated by different processes."

The finding may help explain why the human brain is larger and, in many respects, more advanced than what is observed in other species. In the laboratory dish, human brain stem cells are chock full of Pax6 and produce a large volume of cortical cells, notes Xiaoqing Zhang (no relation to Su-Chun Zhang), a UW-Madison neuroscientist and the lead author of the Cell Stem Cell paper.

"In human brain development, this plays a really important role," says Xiaoqing Zhang. "In humans, the cortex is a major part of the brain. In the mouse, the cortex is a much smaller part of the brain."

Adds Su-Chun Zhang, "In a way, it makes sense that the human brain is regulated in a different way. The brain distinguishes the human as a unique species."
http://www.waisman.wisc.edu/news/stories/2010/ZhangJuly.html

Pax6 is found in all complex metazoans. But it has a unique mutation in humans that makes our brain development different.

Barbarian observes:
A new genus, to be precise. It is why our brains get bigger and better. And in the fossil record we see it happening.

You really have never seriously considered the impossibilities of humans having evolved from chimpanzees or a 'common ancestor', have you?

Comes down to evidence. Genetics, for example. The same evidence that can identify human desecent today also shows common descent of chimps and humans from a common ancestor. Not arguable.

Let me direct you to the co-founder of the evolution theory...

Sorry, endorsements don't work in science. Evidence does. Wallace didn't have that evidence, so of course, he couldn't have ignored it. You're wrong. And of course, Wallace didn't know about the Austrolopithecines, which are intermediate in all of the traits he thought couldn't evolve. So that's gone. It's why creationists so rarely mention him these days.

So how is this evolutionarily significant in terms of the Cambrian Explosion?

The advent of humans is of huge ecological significance in the world.

The Milano mutation that provides nearly complete immunity to arteriosclerosis.

It doesn't produce even a new variety of human.

A new variety that is almost immune to a serious disease.

So how is this evolutionarily significant in terms of the Cambrian Explosion?

A bit faster than most changes in the Cambrian. There were probably some that fast that we don't know about.

Barbarian observes:
Sickle cell mutation, that provides excellent immunity against malaria to heterozygotes, so benificial that heterozygotes have more children survive to healthy adulthood in malarial areas than homozygotes for normal hemoglobin. There is a similar mutation in Southern Europe that provides a similar advantage evolutionarily. And there's a surprise beyond that, which we'll bring up in a bit.

It doesn't produce even a new variety of human.

A new variety with resistance to malaria.

(objects that it doesn't produce a new species)

Evolutionary steps don't always produce speciation.

You're right, there!

EDITED Remember, EDITED speciations should be less common than favorable mutations.

If you want to know about some observed speciations, we can do that, but of course, the question was about some important evolutionary events.
EDITED

Hardly.

You asked about favorable mutations, and when I showed you many of them, you switched over to speciations.

Time to walk away from it - especially as Kimura, Lynch, Kingsolver, Koonin and many others are reporting severe doubts and questioning of the ability and/ or necessity of natural selection to produce the changes necessary to account for the gigantic number of extant and extinct species on the planet.

As you learned, Kimura endorsed Darwinian evolution, and Lynch asserts that humanity will suffer in the absence of natural selection. You keep using those names; I don't think you realize that they actually undercut your claims.

Oh, yes, the LRP5 mutation that provides extremely dense and strong bones, with no detectable side effects. That one's certainly an evolutionary advance.

It doesn't produce even a new variety of human.

A new variety, much more resistant to impact damage. Significant.

But not in the context of this discussion.

Precisely in context. Favorable mutation.

It may have some value in those societies where they progress by beating each other over the head with clubs, I suppose

Or where people drive automobiles. That's how they discovered it. A family was in a crash that should have killed most or all of them, and no one was badly hurt. Then the researchers found out why.

but acromegaly does much the same thing

No. That produces deformities and disabilities. None such with this, except for unusually robust lower jaws, and sometimes bone growths in the palate, neither of which produces and health problems. You've been misled about that.

So if we had an explosion in the printing press, resulting in the scrambling of the type and the typefaces, but the print run still continued, I would say that that book would surely become useless.

I'm surprised you've been here this long, and still believe mutations work like that.

I'm surprised that you've been here that long and still cling to these insignificances as proof that evolution did occur

By definition, it does. Evolution, as several people have reminded you, is a change in allele frequency in a population.

You keep on saying this.

One of the virtues of truth is that it is invariant.

EDITED

You've switched from favorable mutations to speciations, again.

Which, of course, we never see!

You've already been shown examples of speciation.

And of course, we need to expunge the 'natural selection' bit from that title,

Not according to Lynch and Kimural. They think it's essential to evolution.

 

[Vaccine]

You've been hornswoggled by a Muslim creationist, who made up the quote. Here's what NIH actually says:....
It's at the NIH website:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1684746/

I didn't get it from some Muslin creationist, it's in the link you provided. If you go to the link, on the top right under "Format:" there is a link for "PDF 1.6 MB". Click on that link and go to page 11. There you will see this text:
Our study provides detailed genetic and clinical information on the carriers of the AIM mutant in the small community where, apparently, the variant apoprotein had originated. All the described carriers are descendants of the original mating couple. This observation does not, of course, rule out the possibility that either of the spouses had acquired the trait from relatives living in neighboring communities. Limone sul Garda proved to be a village of unusually low cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. These observations should not be attributed to the presence of an apparently protective gene, in view of the relatively low percentage of carriers. The examination of this subsample, consisting now of 33 subjects, of various ages and sex, confirms that the apoprotein abnormality does not seem to be linked to any significant risk of cardiovascular disease. Moreover, differently from other conditions associated with HDL abnormalities (e.g., fish-eye disease [16] and Tangier disease [17,18]), there does not appear to be any clear association between the apoprotein abnormality and any pathological condition, particularly cardiovascular. The phenotype of the apo AIM mutation has been, up to now, described in the heterozygote state, and we have not acquired knowledge of the phenotype corresponding to the homozygote. From examining the genealogic tree, it appears that genetic conditions predicting the appearance of homozygotes were never present. In the case of other inherited abnormalities of lipoprotein metabolism (e.g., genetic Tangier disease [17], fish-eye disease [16], and the apo Al-CIII deficiency [19]), the characteristic phenotypic traits, both biochemical and clinical, are, instead, perceptible only in the homozygotes.

It's best to check the source so nobody gets "hornswoggled" by Wikipedia.

It also causes increase in the bad cholesterol and decrease in the good cholesterol.

See the part highlighted in red. Does this give you some idea of the way professional creationists lie by telling a piece of the truth?

Truth will out. I didn't quote or mention any creationists, but I've found they tend to be extremely careful about what they present as facts. In my experience, the evolutionists tend to take a grain of truth and wrap it in many layers of hypothesis and inferences to make their case.

The part you highlighted in red says there is a marked reduction in the "good" cholesterol (HDL), and increased fatty acids(triglyceridemia). The pat I put in bold says there is no clear association between the mutation and heart disease. This is an example of why Wiki isn't considered a reliable source. I too quote and use wiki for some things, but the more controversial the topic the more I verify.

By definition, it does. Evolution, as several people have reminded you, is a change in allele frequency in a population.

According to Mendel's laws of inheritance, those alleles only have a finite amount of variation. The "fence" around a species Async mentioned.

Barabarian obeserves:
As you just learned, mutation will always produce information.

Yes, but what kind of information, specified or unspecified?

"Specified information" is finding an arrow in a tree, drawing a bull-eye around it, and touting the accuracy. When they do it before the arrow gets there, I'll be impressed. Otherwise, it's just another "just so" story by creationists.

There is more than one way to specify information, drawing the bullseye before shooting the arrow is also specified information. Science has accepted Dembski's Complex Specified Information Theory (CSI).(Thanks Async! I got this from uncommon descent)

"Several clear themes emerged from these research papers: 1) Information is indispensable to our understanding of what life is; 2) Biological information is more than the material structures that embody it; 3) Conventional chemical and evolutionary mechanisms seem insufficient to fully explain the labyrinth of information that is life. By exploring new perspectives on biological information, this volume seeks to expand, encourage, and enrich research into the nature and origin of biological information."

They found Shannon's Theory only applied at the most basic level, Dembski's CSI adds the concept of specification.
"However, at this (formal language) stage meaning plays no role. It was at this level only that Shannon developed his Theory of Communication [3] into the highly useful statistical analyses of the material symbols, solely for the technical purposes of data transmission, storage and processing. Code plus syntax is a necessary distinguishing attribute of all human languages."


http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/8818

Information useful to a cell has to be complex and specified.

Show us that. With the calculations.

Complex Specified Information (CSI) is based upon this theorem:

sp(E) and SP(E) —-> D(E)

When a small probably (SP) event (E) is complex, and SP(E) = [P (E|I) < the Universal Probability Bound]. We know an event E is a small probably event when the probability of event E given I is less than the Universal Probability Bound. I = All relevant side information and all stochastic hypotheses. An event E is specified by a pattern independent of E, or expressed mathematically: sp(E). Upper case letters SP(E) are the small probability event we are attempting to determine is CSI, or designed. Lower case letters sp(E) are a prediction that we will discover the SP(E). Therefore, if sp(E) and SP(E) then —-> D(E). D(E) means the event E is not only small probability, but we can conclude it is designed. Dembski’s Universal Probability Bound = 0.5 x 10–150, or 0.5 times 10 to the exponent negative 150 power.

 

[Barbarian]

Too many snarks for individual edits in post and quotes

According to Mendel's laws of inheritance, those alleles only have a finite amount of variation.

No. Mendel never claimed such thing. Indeed, he was a follower of Darwin.

The "fence" around a species Async mentioned.

The problem is, no one can show us that "fence." If you doubt this, show us a species that is at the limit of its variation, and can't have an additional mutation. And your evidence for that.

Barbarian observes:
EDIT mutation will always produce information.

Yes, but what kind of information, specified or unspecified?

Doesn't matter to evolution.

Barbarian chuckles:
"Specified information" is finding an arrow in a tree, drawing a bull-eye around it, and touting the accuracy. When they do it before the arrow gets there, I'll be impressed. Otherwise, it's just another "just so" story by creationists.

There is more than one way to specify information, drawing the bullseye before shooting the arrow is also specified information.

So far, only drawing bulls-eyes. Let me know when something happens.

Science has accepted Dembski's Complex Specified Information Theory (CSI).(Thanks Async! I got this from uncommon descent)

"Uncommon Descent" is run by ID creationists. Hardly science.

They found Shannon's Theory only applied at the most basic level, Dembski's CSI adds the concept of specification.

The inconvenient truth is, Shannon's theory works. CSI so far, has done nothing whatever. No scientific breakthroughs. No useful technology. It's just a creationist talking point. That's why scientists haven't accepted it. A concept is only good if it does something.

However, at this (formal language) stage meaning plays no role. It was at this level only that Shannon developed his Theory of Communication [3] into the highly useful statistical analyses of the material symbols, solely for the technical purposes of data transmission, storage and processing. Code plus syntax is a necessary distinguishing attribute of all human languages."

Turns out that Shannon's concept works in biology. And of course, Dembski's doesn't. In fact, Dempski has repeatedly shown that he can't even say whether something has or doesn't have specified complexity, unless he's decided in advance. He's repeatedly dodged requests for a blind test of the idea.

Information useful to a cell has to be complex and specified.

Barbarian suggests:
Show us that. With the calculations.

Complex Specified Information (CSI) is based upon this theorem:

sp(E) and SP(E) —-> D(E)

When a small probably (SP) event (E) is complex, and SP(E) = [P (E|I) < the Universal Probability Bound].

So show us the calculations. Use any real-life biological system, and let's take a look at it. Since we're talking evolution, show us how it applies in population genetics.

Lots of stories sound plausible if you take them out of the real. The problem is that Dembski's stories sound plausible only if you take them out of the real.

 

[Vaccine]

Notice that the paper does indeed attribute strong protection against arterioscleosis as a result of having this mutation.

Barbarian, nothing personal, but that is very misleading, if they are saying we shouldn't attribute anything and there is no clear association because of the small sampling, why do you insist on attributing it?

An even better question is why did you change the meaning from "apparently" protective, to "strong" protection? :naughty

Barbarian observes:
By definition, it does. Evolution, as several people have reminded you, is a change in allele frequency in a population.

According to Mendel's laws of inheritance, those alleles only have a finite amount of variation.

No. Mendel never claimed such thing. Indeed, he was a follower of Darwin.

Mendel had strong religious convictions and turns out wrote his papers in opposition to Darwin's theory.
http://www.somosbacteriasyvirus.com/mendel.pdf‎
"Mendel's Opposition to Evolution and to Darwin" B. E. Bishop

The "fence" around a species Async mentioned.

The problem is, no one can show us that "fence." If you doubt this, show us a species that is at the limit of its variation, and can't have an additional mutation. And your evidence for that.

Dog breeding demonstrates the limits of that variance.

Science has accepted Dembski's Complex Specified Information Theory (CSI).(Thanks Async! I got this from uncommon descent)

"Uncommon Descent" is run by ID creationists. Hardly science.

Those papers were published in a scientific journal, uncommon descent just had a post about it.
http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/8818

They found Shannon's Theory only applied at the most basic level, Dembski's CSI adds the concept of specification.
The inconvenient truth is, Shannon's theory works. CSI so far, has done nothing whatever. No scientific breakthroughs. No useful technology. It's just a creationist talking point. That's why scientists haven't accepted it. A concept is only good if it does something.

View attachment 3486Shannon's theory is only good for data transmission, storage, and processing. It treats information as a unit, which does not work for biological information.
Science is accepting CSI theory, it's too bad you won't. It explains biological information quite well.


View attachment 3487
1. An original sender is an intelligent agent that creates the original UI message.
As demonstrated by Gitt et al. [10] this intelligent agent must have
a nonmaterial component beyond the embedded UI. This is because even
UI-guided purely physicochemical processes wholly constrained by natural
laws have never been observed to create de novo UI despite all scientific
efforts to date [10, 12]. Since humans do create de novo UI they
qualify as original senders. This is strong evidence that humans have a
nonmaterial component beyond their embedded UI [10].
2. Intermediate transmitters receive a UI message and simply copy,
transmit, display or broadcast the message. Ideally, an intermediate
transmitter will not distort the meaning of the original message in any
way [10]. Intermediate transmitters can be intelligent agents or
machines that are specifically designed to perform the transmitting
processes.
3. Machine receivers obtain and process the messages and perform the
commanded action thereby achieving the purpose intended by the original
sender. Machine receivers (either mechanical or biological) do not
have the capability to freely interpret the messages. They must be ‘preprogrammed’
with the capability to receive, then process and then execute
the commanded actions without requiring that the meaning of the
messages be determined. In other words, the programmer must convert
the meaning of the messages into a series of preprogrammed executable
steps that are initiated by start commands so that the proper actions are
performed [10, 11].
4. Intelligent receivers possess the capability of determining the meaning of
the message and also possess the capability of making free choices. This
latter capability allows the intelligent receiver to decide whether to perform
the expected action fully, partially or not at all.

View attachment 3485Biological information is not 1 dimensional, so Shannon's theory doesn't work. Biological information has meaning and an expected reaction, which Dembski's CSI theory accounts for.

http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/suppl/10.1142/8818/suppl_file/8818_chap01.pdf

So show us the calculations. Use any real-life biological system, and let's take a look at it. Since we're talking evolution, show us how it applies in population genetics.

I don't like doing math. I suppose it would be better to find one of Dembski's examples.
"While identifying and studying the distinguishing attributes of Universal
Information (UI), we discovered and formulated 32 Empirical Statements involving
the origin and nature of UI [10]. We have repeatedly verified these Empirical
Statements over a 30-year period. Not one of these Empirical Statements has ever
been refuted despite wide dissemination of this information and they remain an
open challenge to this day"
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/suppl/10.1142/8818/suppl_file/8818_chap01.pdf

 

[Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
Notice that the paper does indeed attribute strong protection against arterioscleosis as a result of having this mutation.

Barbarian, nothing personal, but that is very misleading

No, it's precisely what the researchers reported:

Am J Hum Genet. 1985 November; 37(6): 1083–1097.
PMCID: PMC1684746
AIMilano apoprotein identification of the complete kindred and evidence of a dominant genetic transmission.Lipid-lipoprotein parameters of the A1Milano carriers were compoared with the corresponding sex and age classes of the general population. A significant reduction in the HDL-Ch levels and a considerable mean increase in trigliceridemia were detected, the latter finding not reaching statistical significance because of the small number of A1Milano positive individuals. These represent the most numerous known group of carriers of an apolipoprortein mutation, and from the clinical point of view, show an unusually low prevalence of artherosclerotic vascular conditions.p.1084 (highlighting mine)

What they said was that these people show a great resistance to hardening of the arteries. And they also said, because there were a small number of them, the findings didn't explain the incidence of heart disease in the town as a whole. The quote-miner who tried to conflate the two was clever, but he didn't anticipate anyone actually going back to see what the sentence referred to.

if they are saying we shouldn't attribute anything

But that's not what they said.

and there is no clear association because of the small sampling

To the health of the community, not to the health of the people with the mutation. You see, the guys who have you that bit of text removed the context, so you thought it referred to the people with the mutation. In fact it referred to the majority of people without the mutation. edit

why do you insist on attributing it?

Because I actually read the report and know what it says.

An even better question is why did you change the meaning from "apparently" protective, to "strong" protection?

Since the report says that the carriers "generally show no signs" of artherosclerosis, that's an understatement.

Barbarian observes:
By definition, it does. Evolution, as several people have reminded you, is a change in allele frequency in a population.

According to Mendel's laws of inheritance, those alleles only have a finite amount of variation.

No. Mendel never claimed such thing. Indeed, he was a follower of Darwin.

Mendel had strong religious convictions

So did a lot of other followers of Darwin. It seems you're undercutting your own argument.

and turns out wrote his papers in opposition to Darwin's theory.

Nope. Your source admits that only one writer has suggested that Mendel opposed Darwin. On the other hand, we know that Mendel wrote to Darwin, and even submitted his paper to him, although Darwin never got around to reading it. Seems unlikely that he would have done that if he rejected evolution. What is relevant is that Mendel's discoveries cleared up a nasty problem for natural selection that Darwin could not solve, because he didn't know about genes. The great resurgence of Darwinism (in the Modern Synthesis of natural selection and genetics) is due to Mendel.

Scientists who have studied the issue have mostly concluded that Mendel was an evolutionist, although he might have differed with Darwin on the pace of evolution.

The "fence" around a species Async mentioned.

The problem is, no one can show us that "fence." If you doubt this, show us a species that is at the limit of its variation, and can't have an additional mutation. And your evidence for that.

Dog breeding demonstrates the limits of that variance.

Since we have seen new mutations in dogs even in recent decades, we know that's false. Can you show us even one species that is at this mythical "limit", and can have no more mutations? Even one?

Science has accepted Dembski's Complex Specified Information Theory (CSI).(Thanks Async! I got this from uncommon descent)

"Uncommon Descent" is run by ID creationists. Hardly science.

Those papers were published in a scientific journal, uncommon descent just had a post about it.

They once claimed the Smithsonian had endorsed ID, when in fact, some IDers had merely rented space in the Smithsonian for a meeting. So I'm skeptical. Show me.

Ah, it's not a journal. It's a book, a summary of an IDer meeting:

Biological Information
New Perspectives
Proceedings of the Symposium
edited by: Robert J Marks II (Baylor University, USA) edited by: Michael J Behe (Lehigh University, USA) edited by: William A Dembski (Discovery Institute, USA) edited by: Bruce L Gordon (Houston Baptist University, USA) edited by: John C Sanford (Cornell University, USA)

All IDers. That's their idea of "peer review."

They found Shannon's Theory only applied at the most basic level, Dembski's CSI adds the concept of specification.

The inconvenient truth is, Shannon's theory works. CSI so far, has done nothing whatever. No scientific breakthroughs. No useful technology. It's just a creationist talking point. That's why scientists haven't accepted it. A concept is only good if it does something.

Name: CSI.gif Views: 2 Size: 1.2 KBShannon's theory is only good for data transmission, storage, and processing. It treats information as a unit, which does not work for biological information.

Nope. That's wrong too. It's commonly used in population genetics. But as I said, CSI does nothing at all, and has produced no new knowledge, no breakthroughs. It's just a story IDers like to tell each other.

Science is accepting CSI theory

That's a testable hypothesis. So I checked. CSI is practically non-existent in peer reviewed literature.

Biological information is not 1 dimensional, so Shannon's theory doesn't work.

That would surprise geneticists and population biologists who routinely use it in their work.

Information theory in molecular biology (Citations: 42)
Christoph Adami
This article introduces the physics of information in the context of molecular biology and genomics. Entropy and information, the two central concepts of Shannon's theory of information and communication, are often confused with each other but play transparent roles when applied to statistical ensembles (i.e., identically prepared sets) of symbolic sequences. Such an approach can distinguish between entropy and information in genes, predict the secondary structure of ribozymes, and detect the covariation between residues in folded proteins. We also review applications to molecular sequence and structure analysis, and introduce new tools in the characterization of resistance mutations, and in drug design.

Biological information has meaning and an expected reaction, which Dembski's CSI theory accounts for.

Unfortunately for Dembski, all his "CSI" can do is "God,er designer mustadunnit."

It doesn't do anything. And if it doesn't do anything, what good is it?

So show us the calculations. Use any real-life biological system, and let's take a look at it. Since we're talking evolution, show us how it applies in population genetics.

I don't like doing math.

If so, you're lost. This is about the math.

I suppose it would be better to find one of Dembski's examples.
"While identifying and studying the distinguishing attributes of Universal
Information (UI), we discovered and formulated 32 Empirical Statements involving
the origin and nature of UI [10]. We have repeatedly verified these Empirical
Statements over a 30-year period. Not one of these Empirical Statements has ever
been refuted despite wide dissemination of this information and they remain an
open challenge to this day"

Show us the numbers for those. I'm guessing you won't find them. It looks like Dembski's blowing smoke again.

 

[Sparkey]

"Uncommon Descent" is run by ID creationists. Hardly science.

Am I too extreme in my acceptance of excellence? Frankly, I wouldn't mind if a good idea came from the mouth of a child, it's okay to weigh the idea on its own merit. There are formal terms for various fallacies, but why should I teach my grandmother to suck eggs? Take for instance the illustration of a library while speaking about "information" and the various types and compare it to a simple analogy (used by a Member here) about words and letters, 'cn u ndrstnd me?" I like the library illustration and don't consider the source of that useful wisdom while evaluating it. Can you make a case that I need to? One is clearly better adapted to our discussion than another.

 

[Barbarian]

Am I too extreme in my acceptance of excellence?

Not if you regard ID as science. ID leader and Discovery Institute Fellow Michael Behe testified that ID is science by the same measure that astrology is science.

Frankly, I wouldn't mind if a good idea came from the mouth of a child

If Hugo Chavez were to tell me what was wrong about America, I'd get a second opinion. Just saying.

it's okay to weigh the idea on its own merit

It's what we were doing. Citing endorsements from people with an ideological axe to grind, that's not O.K.

There are formal terms for various fallacies, but why should I teach my grandmother to suck eggs? Take for instance the illustration of a library while speaking about "information" and the various types and compare it to a simple analogy (used by a Member here) about words and letters, 'cn u ndrstnd me?" I like the library illustration and don't consider the source of that useful wisdom while evaluating it. Can you make a case that I need to?

If one is presented as an expert, one's credentials and conflicts of interest go on the table.

One is clearly better adapted to our discussion than another.

If we stuck to facts and avoided quotes, it would work better. But given the scarcity of facts for certain positions, I'm thinking we're going to see lots of quotes for the foreseeable future.

 

[Sparkey]

Not if you regard ID as science.

Fair enough, I guess. Except I don't even regard Science as science. Sure it has its place and all and yes, there are many mysteries but of those who stand and say, "Urethra! I have found it!" Well, I'm skeptical. Skeptical of one and all save God. It's true for me too. I am skeptical of me. I'm no different. There are lots of things that can be said about debate, but heated and stubborn debate? Where is the merit? At least with men that do not have fixed positions, debate may serve to point out things that have not been considered in hope of correction.

I've been to many sites over the years and have discussed topics similar to those being discussed here. I like this one best (needless to say) but still, in all that time, I've never heard one person make a considered retreat from their dug-in position (and it goes beyond Science and Intelligent Design to spill all over) and then make a concise and conciliatory statement of gratitude to their opponent for their help in changing their mind.

Maybe there is one? Did that one escape my attention?

Barbarian? I used to be a strong [fill in the blank] but I have been listening and learning and I'm changed! Where I used to think [fill in the blank], I now see it better, closer to what I know is true, and you know what? I have you to thank for this.

Thank you.