Here is an informative little video by a guy named Steve Mould who does a lot of “science” videos on youtube. Its all (ostensibly) about how simple little processes can make “meaningful” structures from stochastic processes-and he uses magnetic shaped little parts to show this. Its a popular channeled followed by millions, and is often referenced by other famous people in the science community-and his fans love it.
And hey, it does show how meaningful structures CAN form from random processes. Right? So you can learn from this. Wink, wink. Nod, nod. And all the skeptics will know exactly what he is really saying. Cause we are all part of the clique that knows this language-the language of the skeptic propagandist. I mean, he almost hides it, the real message, it is just under the surface, and the less skeptically aware, the casualist, might even miss it. The casualist might not learn as much about Steve Mould and what he is trying to say here-but the skeptic knows. “See, atheism is true! Spread the word!” Steve has given the wink. The same wink used by DeGrasse Tyson, and Sean Carroll, Lawrence Krauss, Brian Greene, and on and on. You know the one.
And for 95% of his viewers, whether they know it or not, they got his message. I mean, look, its plain as day, right? He just showed you, that is certainly a meaningful structure that arose from random processes, isn’t it? Its defintely meaningful, its a, a, a , well, it’s shape that, we have a, a name for…that’s kind of…anyway, defintely random, I mean other than the magnets and the precut shapes, and the little ball with nothing else inside, and the shaking only until its just right then stopping kind of way…That’s random kind of right???
But there are 5% percent of his viewers that spotted his little wink and nod, and said, hold on a second. If you want us to believe that your little explanation about how simply life can form from nonsense without a plan, how blind exactly do you want us to be? 95%, they are hooked, you got them (Ryan StallardThere are so many creationist videos this obliterates. Especially 4:18.). But some likeGhryst VanGhod helpfully point out: “this is incorrect. the kinesin travels along fibres within the cell and takes the various molecules exactly where they need to be, they are not randomly “jumbling around in solution”. https://youtu.be/gbycQf1TbM0 ” and then you get to see a video that tells you just a few more of the things that are ACTUALLY happening which are even more amazing if you weren’t already skeptical (the real kind).
And if you go through some more of the comments you will notice a few more (real) skeptics, not the wink and nod kind, and you will start to notice why the wink nod propogandist skeptics everywhere you look in modern culture are a very puposefully designed cancer on knowledge and thought.
I just thought it was revealing that you should bracket all scientists under one label (thanks, Bill) when it’s a simple matter of fact that scientists are as varied a bunch of people as the general population.
I’ve already said that you are clear you don’t like scientists as a group. Why you don’t is less clear but that seems a function of your comments anyway, the projection of nodding and winking while demonstrating the technique yourself most marvellously.
So, I’m still wondering what your issues are:
why you are so bothered by other people’s lack of belief in the various gods on offer. (Presumably, you can’t prefer all options to atheism but if you don’t want to be up front about it… this isn’t the Spanish Inquisition.)
why you think that scientific work results in or is otherwise connected to atheism.
Mould tries to convince us that the molecular activity within cells is stochastic. He does this by ignoring or downplaying the vast amount of directed activity at the molecular level. He gives us a demonstration of pieces forming a complex structure by just being shaken about. How similar is this to the reality of virus formation within the cell? He tells a tale of amino acids floating around occasionally bumping into the ribosome complex. This occasional coming together can attach amino acids at the rate of over 100 per minute. “Ocassionally” seems to be a very imprecise word. He skips over the fact that the capsid structure must also be able to fall apart easily during the process of infection. Is it also a stochastic process that causes the capsid to fall apart?
Rather than amassing a great deal of evidence for the position he is trying to defend, I think he is being very selective with the evidence.
I don’t know how you could have inferred that I’m not able to name any of them, from the fact that in one specific post I didn’t bother to.
From the body of phoodoo’s efforts, I think this can be answered fairly simply. Scientists, evil cesspool dwellers they are, have been relentlessly demonstrating for centuries now that phoodoo’s god is NOT hiding in all the most likely places. This thread was started when phoodoo got hysterically offended that his god might not even be hiding in the process of self-organization!
Mould gives the impression that amino acids are just jossling around and they occasionally meet up with ribosomes to form a specific sequence. In reality ribosomes can assemble amino acids at a rate of up to 3 per second. “Occasionally” is a very imprecise term. He gives the impression that one sequence codes for one protein. It is not always that simple. Is the protein moving about aimlessly in solution? He says that the production of proteins is a stochastic looking process. How stochastic is it really? He glances over the fact that once a virus infects a cell the capsid falls away. Is this falling apart just as stochastic as the seemingly stochastic process of capsid formation? If the pieces can assemble so easily what changes to make them fall apart when required to do so?
I would say that when it comes to trying to convince us of the stochasticity of cellular processes he is being very selective with the evidence. He seems to regard the directed activity at the molecular level as incidental and barely worth mentioning.
Sorry for repeating myself. I’m just back from getting my Covid booster and flu jabs. I was rushing to write a post before I left and my computer crashed. I thought I’d lost the original post so I hurriedly rewrote it from memory only to now discover that they have both appeared.
CharlieM,
Just had my booster a couple of days ago and feeling a bit rough.
I can remove the extraneous comment if you wish.
But this is what is happening in the cell. During protein synthesis, protein charged tRNAs are colliding randomly with ribosome complexes. There’s no assembly line.
Yes, I mentioned crystallisation in the first comment of the thread. How can anyone seeing the beauty of self-organisation not see the hand of God?
What would be the point of naming a gazillion scientists who don’t even care about these discussions, and that you’ve never heard about?
Nope. he demonstrates that shapes and some movement can do the trick. That’s not “stochastic”, the components must be there, present, and they must have the shapes and such. I think you read too much into what the purpose was.
Nope, he does that by showing that some pieces with some shapes can self-assemble with a bit of shaking. I also think you might be misusing the concept of “directed activity.”
Not identical if that’s what you mean. How relevant? Relevant in helping us understand how self-assembly might be attained, at least for some, somewhat, simple structures.
Not really. If the genetic contents are injected, there’s no need for thr capsid to self-disassemble. When it’s a need, the changes in Ph, attacks by proteases, etc, might be involved (I haven’t checked latest developments in the area, but I know a lot of cases where the capsids are left behind because the DNA or RNA are injected into the cell, leaving the envelopes pretty much intact).
Capsids do fall apart by somewhat stochastic phenomena, like molecular collisions, but, again, the claim is not for mere stochastic phenomena, the claim is that sometimes shapes and electrostatics, for example, might be enough to attain self-assembly. Collisions can happen inside a cell, but I doubt that’s an issue. Sometimes the pH inside some vesicle can make the trick.
But we have never detected little people doing any of that, if that’s what you’re thinking.
I’m sorry to disillusion you Charlie, but Mould’s description is quite accurate.
Amino-acyl tRNA’s are jostling around in solution, and they randomly bump into the ribosome. We know this because researchers study the kinetics of protein synthesis. In excruciating detail.
“Occasionally” is an extremely imprecise term, but it conveys what is going on. Would you have felt better if he had said “the time to arrival of the next tRNA is Poisson-distributed with a mean that depends on the concentration of the cognate amino-acyl tRNAs”?
Here’s the funny thing: when you originally wrote “This occasional coming together can attach amino acids at the rate of over 100 per minute.” I misread your statement as saying 100 per second, and I thought “that’s pretty fast for a ribosome, but pretty slow for a diffusion-limited reaction”.
So, yeah, ribosomes clip along at between 2 and 5 aa/second, depending on the circumstances. That’s really not that impressive. The limiting rate for most enzyme reactions is typically anywhere between 1 and 10,000 per second depending on circumstances… hence my reading your original comment as 100 per second.
If you want impressive, carbonic anhydrase manages 600,000 reactions per second, all from random jostling.
Take-home: your assumptions re biochemistry are hopelessly wrong: specifically, your idea about what is impressively quick is waaaaay off.
Where the Hand really outdoes itself is in composing the impressive Variations on a Snowflake Theme.
And I also never suggested that every scientist is part of that cesspool. I actually named many who are though. I don’t even see how the fact that you think some scientists aren’t trying to be preachers nullifies my point. Because as I have shown plenty are. And so what these causes is a distrust in science. Oh, and why should I be so offended by this, Alan so wonders. Puzzling, huh?
If Mould is lying about how easy the process of self-assembly is (and he is, Jock trying to be an apologist notwithstanding) and if Lawrence Kraus and Dawkins, and Tyson, and Nye, and Green, and Sapolsky, and Seth Shostak, and Steven Novella, and , and…(you choose your popular science communicator-and I challenge you to name even one who DOESN’T also try to preach their worldview) and are trying to manipulate the truth to support their preferred view, then an obvious reaction of that is to distrust scientists on other matters. And there is a long history of scientists doing just that-lying to sell their point.
So, I find it fairly obviously stupid to NOT be offended by these charlatans. Do you think Wikipedia should provide truth to the best of its ability, or should it be run by guerrilla skeptics selling their worldview? Should youtube be a bastion of atheists scientists selling their hope that people will believe life is so easy, you just shake a bottle, and out it comes? Should Brian Greene be the voice of spiritual guidance that rules the modern world, because he has figured out the answers-what with looking through a telescope and all?
Dumbifying society shouldn’t be praised. I am not surprised that Alan, and Jock are all for it, however.
phoodoo,
Lots of misplaced anger there phoodoo. I won’t waste more time trying to explain your mistakes. I already did, and you could not care less. So, stay stupidly angry is that’s what you prefer.
A very true statement. God does not appear in the experience of millions. Yet there are billions of us. So we must then conclude that He appears in the experience of the balance population of billions of souls.
Glad we got that out of the way.
Oh and by the way, since when is appearance a required piece of evidence? We don’t require that gravity shows itself to science. We only assume that our mind’s calculations and the effects of those calculations are weighty enough to conclude the existence of gravity.
By the same token, our mind’s logical analyses and the effects of those logical analyses are weighty enough to conclude that God exists.
I am beginning to think that skeptics are the controlled opposition, creating the appearance of a fair fight.
Actually, the most reasonable position is that life is designed. How so? Consider that humanity designs (no argument there) and humanity is embedded in nature, and human designs are found in human bodies, whether it be transportation systems, manufacturing systems, defensive systems, wireless communication systems, etc, Therefore we can conclude that humanity in particular is not the original source of those designs but nature in general is the author of design.
In fact, Mould is unwittingly showing nature’s meta-design capabilities. What I mean by meta-design is that you dont see the design in the individual parts but in the process, output, application of the final product.
Note that the virus is not a living thing. the ribosome as well is not a living entity (even tough it is embedded in what we consider a living organism, the human body).
The virus enters a cell, the capsid shell falls away, exposing a strand of RNA. A cellular ribosome picks up the RNA strand, reads it, outputs capsin proteins, the capsin proteins come together to form a new capsid. Note what Mould does not say: the new capsid proteins are not actually randomly coming together. they have to come together ‘around’ a strand of RNA, which is in fact another virus. Otherwise, there is no point to the whole operation. So why didn’t Mould add a strand of RNA to the transparent egg containing the capsin proteins. Ah, the six million dollar question.
As well, Mould likes to emphasize that amino acids are aimlessly floating around in solution as if it is some deep intuition. Note that ALL the amino acids required to do any amount of work in the cell are ALWAYS present in solution. It is meaningless to point out that they appear to be floating around aimlessly in solution. The design element is that ALL the amino acids required for any work are present in the required environment AND there is a mechanism for their utilization.
Further, the fact that the virus is not alive, and the ribosome which is not alive either so has no idea that it is producing a capsin protein for a virus that can potentially kill the host it depends on, is actually more proof of design. How are unalive collections of atoms doing anything, much less producing specific configurations of matter for specific purposes. What is causing the virus capsin covering to fall away when it enters a cell? what is causing the capsin proteins to self-assemble ‘around’ another viral strand of RNA? Why doesn’t the ribosome recognize that the viral strand of RNA is foreign matter, but the body’s immune system recognizes the virus as foreign matter.
Design.
So you must be claiming animists, Buddhists, Moslems, Hindus, Jews etc are all following the same one true God and the differences are just natural variation.
So the lament here seems to be not that Mould is secretly sending subliminal atheist messages but that he isn’t explicitly preaching ID creationism?
Perhaps that is the same thing?
What causes unalive collections of drops of water to fall down from heavens in a specific downward pattern with the specific purpose of watering all the plants?
You see, I have trouble spotting the purpose of viruses. So can you tell me what is the purpose of, say, HIV and how you established that?
Or, in fact, any virus at all.
Or, in fact, any biological entity at all.
What is the purpose of humans? Of Donkeys? Or what about those worms that blind children? Is the purpose of the worms that blind children to blind children? Is it as simple as that after all?
Let’s avoid the whipped cream orgasm *ewww* discussion, shall we?
To clarify myself: I can certainly see a purpose to a virus: to make loads and loads of new viruses. It’s just that I can easily think of a perfectly natural explanation why a virus has that purpose. Steve apparently has some other purpose in mind that requires a Design explanation. I’d like to hear what that purpose is and how he learned this.
How many random collisions does it take to fit into the corresponding gap in the ribosome?
From this article
And it would seem that there is more to be discovered about tRNA
tRNAs as regulators of biological processes
They can multitask like the best of us. 🙂
Also
Archaeal aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases interact with the ribosome to recycle tRNAs
If they are floating around randomly then there must be some sort of control constraining them to do so within limited areas awaiting reuse.
That’s the point. If we’re talking about design as in what people do, “therefore a superhuman made humans,” then there’s inescapable incoherence. However, if you want to define design as whatever happens naturally, then we’re saying the same thing, that nature, the way nature works, is the foundation, not human-like designers.
Why do you think so? We are on a completely different scale. At the molecular scale, nothing is at rest in an aqueous solution, molecules are “bumping into each other” constantly. Keeping with tRNA, all that is needed, is that the matching codon and anti-codon come into contact and they will “stick”
Nope. If a tRNA falls off a ribosome, then the next ribosome it interacts with will probably be one nearby, even with completely random jostling. That’s a well known property of random walks.
All your ‘exquisite coordination’ is an artefact of your muddled thinking, no more.
It’s easy to make two different things look similar, if one describes them at a sufficient degree of generality and abstraction. (Hence the joke that to a topolgist, there’s no difference between a human being and doughnut.)
In the case of gravity, we have both a wide range of observed phenomena, a mathematical description of their relationships sufficiently precise to generate testable predictions (e.g. the discovery of Neptune), as well as generating well-known predictive failures (e.g. the perihelion of Mercury) that led the way for more sophisticated mathematical models that explain the previous models as limiting cases.
What do we have comparable to that in theology?
it’s not a joke. Topologically speaking, it’s reasonably accurate.
false equivalence. water drops dont drop off RNA strands and wait for new capsid proteins to be formed.
Yes, you having trouble spotting the purpose of viruses are the problem you need to solve. viruses are markers that tell organisms to change their activity if they want to stay alive. even a child can spot that purpose. activity has positive and negative consequences. parents that dont tell their kids to not play in the dirt will deal with the resultant diseases that occur. getting in close proximate with people you know are suscepticle to sickness increases your risk of disease.
But thats the thing isnt it? Bristling at an unseen God telling you what to do.
reread what i said. you are not talking about nature designing. you believe there is a dichotomy between what nature in general does and what humans in particular do. There is no dichotomy. nature designs as humans design. nature designed before humans designed.
Theists simply understand that nature’s design capabilities didn’t evolve. Design software was installed at the beginning of creation. Remember superior technology is indistinguishable with magic. Theists understand that this technology is NOT magic but embodied information.
Really? Where?
Yeah and all you can present in your experience is Jesus on burnt toast, rather than actually Jesus.
Yeah I don’t know, every other subject ever?
Religious logic:
You: I have a billion dollars, or a lamborghini, or a really hot gf?
Me: Oh yeah, prove it!
You: WHEN IS APPEARANCE A REQUIRED PIECE OF EVIDENCE? GRAVITY!
Me: … is an invisible force of attraction between objects of mass, that makes testable predictions that can be observed – such as gravitational lensing, and the trajectory of objects in a gravitational field, and the force of attraction giving weight(mass) to something directly measured with a scale. But there is no scale for measuring the effects of God, nor can you predict an effect of God with an equation. All we have are you claiming God did something after the fact without any way to test it and you can’t predict any future effects.
You: [fill in the response]
Glad we got that out of the way.
Bzzt, wrong. Naked RNA is not released into the cytosol, this would immediately get degraded by cytosolic RNases. It is, at the very least, still packaged in so-called nucleoproteins that protect it from RNase digestion.
Yes they are. The fact that a piece of RNA is part of the assembly process does not mean the individual pieces aren’t moving around randomly until they encounter each other and assemble through electrostatic forces.
Whether two or more proteins bind each other, or it’s a piece of RNA and one or more proteins, it’s still just random movement of both until they encounter each other and electrostatic forces of attraction between them make them stick together. A protein in solution doesn’t know to move towards another protein(or piece of RNA) as it has no way of “knowing” there’s another one present before it gets close enough for the electrostatic attraction between them to dominate the random jumbling motion. They really do just randomly diffuse around until they get close enough. That’s true whether it’s protein-protein or RNA-protein interactions.
Because it would change nothing about the demonstration, it would just add one more component.
All of this is just meaningless blather. There is no “design element” in the fact that amino acids are “ALWAYS present in solution”. Radiation is always present in outer space, and radiation can kill you, that doesn’t make it designed for that purpose either.
The fact that atoms and molecules do things without knowing what they do is “more proof of design”? What the fuck lol. You’re not making any sense.
Purpose is in the eye of the beholder. Atoms and molecules react due to the forces of attraction and repulsion experienced by their constituents, that doesn’t entail it is their “purpose” to do so. There is no reason to think they’d need for anyone to have intended for them to do it, to do it.
Are you asking out of ignorance, because you think if this isn’t know then God mustadunit, or what?
Oh dear, it appears I am less perceptive than a child. As I stated in a previous comment, the only purpose to viruses I can spot is to make loads and loads of new viruses.
So tell us more: How exactly did you establish that viruses are “markers that tell organisms to change their activity”? Viruses were only discovered at the end of the 19th century. Before that time few people were aware how infectious diseases were transmitted, so I strongly doubt they could adjust their behaviour appropriately then. In addition, many viruses use vectors (like ticks and mosquitos) that are very hard to evade by a behavioural change. That seems a bit an inconsiderate Design choice. Finally, I note that many organisms lack motile behaviour altogether (for example most plants), yet these are also infected by viruses. Why is that, when the purpose of viruses is to tell organisms to change their activity?
Sorry for the dumb questions; I am sure a child could easily answer those questions.
No not at all, but I do bristle at people that claim to know exactly what their God wants me to do. Somehow, it always turns out to be the same thing they themselves want me to do. What coincidence.
That comes dangerously close to saying viruses are just another form of natural selection and they’re supposed to preferentially kill the elderly, or people with comorbidities. I didn’t know good Christians such as yourself were such fans of social Darwinism and eugenics.
You can just declare any effect of the existence of viruses to be what their purpose is. Viruses constitute some percentage of total organic matter on Earth, clearly their purpose is to do that. Viruses are vectors for horizontal transfer of genetic information, clearly that is their purpose. Viruses kill weaker organisms preferentially, clearly that is their purpose. Viruses exist, they have this and that effect, therefore [pick effect] is their intended purpose.
I strongly suspect that Steve thinks HIV was created to punish homosexuals. His logic, such as it is, forces that conclusion.
Why did Steve’s god make people gay in the first place is what I’d like to know….
In fact the opposite is true: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/07/16/537075018/dirt-is-good-why-kids-need-exposure-to-germs
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/01/17/is-playing-in-the-dirt-good-for-kids-immune-systems/?sh=120b59bf7ba2
Now, the only really interesting question is if these new facts will change the way Steve thinks?
Now it turns out the situation is the exact opposite of what Steve claimed will Steve address or ignore this?
I say no. Otherwise he’d not be an IDC supporter in the first place. It’s the refusal to address facts that defines IDC supporters it seems.
Oh ok.
So then how about now, can you name some well known science communicators who aren’t also atheist mouthpieces?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_R._Elsberry
https://thebestschools.org/magazine/most-influential-scientists/#Karplus
And many others on that list.
Careful now, that might imply religious people aren’t all that keen on popularizing science.
Very few of those people are famous for being science popularizers. I’ve never seen Wesley on a TV show promoting science, for example.
I do think phoodoo has a point(he just doesn’t understand the causality and thinks it’s a sort of conspiracy against theism), most science popularizers are atheists or agnostics for good reason: Science itself is eroding to religious faith, and people who advocate a lot for science probably also hold science in a very high esteem, which might otherwise be a position held by religion in the lives of religious people.
Maybe, but he said
So I wonder why he chooses to begin his description of the sequence of events going from molecular processes to the organism at a point he takes to be stochastic. This gives his listeners the impression that the organism is the product of initial conditions which are blind and undirected. If he was to start from the perspective of the mRNA then he would have to begin with a meaningful structure. The ribosome uses the amino acids supplied by the tRNA as instructed by the sequence in the mRNA. The seems to me like a directed process but he has included the building of proteins as being “stochastic-looking”.
So why does he say that the building of proteins is stochastic?
Self-assembly is a useful tool in many directed processes. That’s why materials scientists are looking into how nature does it.
Simple viruses that do not have injection mechanisms and usually gain access to the cell complete with capsid through endocytosis.
My point is that they are designed to self-assemble when required and fall apart when required.
What have little people got to do with it? No I do not believe that there is any conscious rational thinking happening at the cellular level.
That might be your point, but it’s just an assertion. The fact that they fall apart under some conditions, and self-assemble under others, is neither proof nor even an indication that they were designed to do so by anything other than natural selection. In a way similar to how the fact that mud drying has a propensity to also crack also isn’t evidence that cracked mud was designed to once be wet and then later harden and crack.
At least not by any sort of design that involves any form of conscious choice, or knowing intent and foresight. Blind physical forces can produce entities that behave in different ways under different conditions. None of that implies intentional design.
That’s fair. I think the trouble really is that no matter who you might mention you can always “read between the lines” to infer that they are really preaching atheism.
Perhaps it’d be easier to ask phoodoo who he thinks is a science populariser who is not pushing an atheist agenda.
Designed by what? When? How?
Your link mentions the effects of tRNA availability, but I don’t see anything there about the behaviour of tRNA.
And the availability of these tRNAs depends on them being suitably charged by enzyme activity. Without this activity, if tRNAs and their matching amino acids relied on just bumping into each other without the presence of these enzymes then the occasions when they came together would be vastly reduced. Now that would be what I would call stochastic.
In the development of organisms timings are very important. It would be all very well churning out proteins at vast rates but unless cells are able to process them at an equally quick rate then things would very quickly gum up. Coordinated activity throughout is a necessity. I’m sure most of us have seen clips of sausage making machines being operated at speeds faster than the operator can handle. I’m sure yo get the gist.
What happens to cells where coordinated activity was less coordinated then others?
Why is it that we don’t appear to see cells now that don’t lack such “coordinated activity”? Can you think of any reason?
Aminoacyl tRNA synthetases may interest you. Might be a better avenue to argue divine intervention. You wouldn’t be the first. 😉
There are many examples of molecules being enclosed or confined to designated spaces. Capsids are a case in point as are intracellular membranes.
You ignore the fact that there are a multitude of enzymes which have the task of speeding up reactions. Most intracellular processes go on in spite of and not because of activities which they have to contend with such as Brownian motion.
Oh, no, no, no. How they speed up reactions which happen without them but at much lower rates is fascinating. They are, to use a bad analogy, like marriage brokers.
From this article
I would say that this impedes the normal spontaneous molecular diffusion rate thus altering the stochasticity of the system. The random walks of tRNAs are significantly curtailed.