colewd made a comment I found interesting:
We should also admit the major evolutionary transitions are poorly understood because they require significant new biological information.
We should educate them on what biological information is.
We should admit that the origin of biological information is poorly understood.
I followed up with a question:
Can you give an example? Is Lenski’s experement an example of such biological information arriving? If so, why? If not, why not?
colewd responded:
I understand you think the Lenski experiment is evidence of rmns creating biological information despite very small changes to the actual DNA sequences.
Lets agree to disagree here or we may derail the op.
In order to not detail the OP this OP has been created for further discussion.
Some questions for colewd:
Is there a threshold of the size of the changes before biological information can be said to have been created? What is it?
Does the length of the DNA sequence have to change before it is considered that new biological information has been created?
What was the change in the amount of biological information in the Lenski experiment? Did it go up, down or stay the same? Justify your answer.
Is it impossible for ‘rmns’ to create new biological information? If so, where does it actually come from? And how do you know that?
What is the definition of “significant biological information”? Can you put a figure on it? If you can’t how do you know that “rmns” cannot achieve that level of change?
What is the maximum “rmns” can achieve on it’s own with regard to “biological information”? Can it increase, decrease or do nothing?
Richie Retard? That’s cruel.
Oh, and that blog claims that it is “exposing the alleged theory of evolution as the nonsense it is.” So thanks for the link!
😉
Mung,
It’s a top rescource. Did you know the blog owner, Joe Gallien is a defacto ID LEADER!? In the field of intelligent design evolution(ism)
I just want to know if people have any idea what they are talking about. Does an 8-sided die contain 3 bits of octagonal information?
Mung,
No, not least because such a die is an octahedron, not an octagon.
What were you saying about people who don’t know what they’re talking about?
LoL. Thanks! Is that covered at that web page you keep sending me to?
So what do you think keiths, is Joe wrong?
equal gene frequencies (0.25 each) of A, C, G, and T
My program displays a Shannon entropy, or average information per symbol of 2.0 bits/symbol.
However, if we change the frequencies, say [A = 0.25, C = 0.50, G = 0.125, T = 0.125] then the Shannon entropy, or average information per symbol, drops to 1.75 bits/symbol.
A clear decrease. No amount of “natural selection” is going to help here, since the maximum entropy, and thus the maximum average info per symbol, will always be highest when each outcome is equally probable.
Why am I wrong?
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
If I claimed that Joe doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that would be against the rules. It would be no different from saying that Joe is ignorant, only worse. So if you think I claimed someone doesn’t know what they are talking about please take it up in Moderation Issues.
And the number of bits contained in an octahedron is? And the number of bits contained in an octagon is? And the difference is?
I disagree with Mung about the gene frequency example. Shannon information is the reduction in uncertainty, expressed as a reduction in an entropy (in this case not classical thermodynamic entropy but the uncertainty of which base we see). When natural selection results in a C, there is a reduction of 2 bits in entropy.
The “information” calculated from the entropy, as Mung has done, is in effect a channel capacity, as it calculates how much information arrives each time that uncertainty is reduced to zero.
As in regard to Mung’s earlier point that “If the frequency changes it could be due to factors completely unrelated to natural selection”, The calculation was for a large enough population that there would basically be no genetic drift, where there was no mutation, no migration, so that natural selection would always change the gene frequency to fix the most fit allele. But if we wanted, we could do the calculation for a finite population using Kimura’s formulas for fixation probability. In doing so we would need to be careful and calculate Specified Information, calculating the probability that the most fit allele became fixed.
Mung,
Natural selection tends to increase fitness. Fitness does not correspond to the average amount of Shannon information per base in a DNA sequence.
Obviously.
Case in point:
Reduction in entropy (Joe wrote uncertainty) is information.
The simplest thing I know to point you to is mutual information, which I’m sure you’ve read about:
You don’t have to look too terribly hard at the formula to see the entropy reduction. The communication-theoretic intuition is that you can transmit an average of
bits per symbol when the transmitter and the receiver both know the outcome of 
instead of an average of 
bits per symbol when they share no knowledge. The information gained by observing the outcome of 
is the reduction in the average number of bits transmitted, 
Seems to me you’ve answered your own question.
Oops. Hadn’t yet read this far.
I’m still waiting on those CSI calculations.
Eternity is a very long time.
Ah, so biology has flipped to being digital again, now we aren’t trying to deny the evidence of molecular phylogeny or simulations? Triffic.
DNA contains the information necessary to build proteins, but does this mean that it contains all the information to form mature organisms or even organs within an organism? I don’t think that it contains anywhere near this amount of information.
I believe that formative fields play a primary role in bodily development. The information which produces the physical substance is contained in the DNA but the in-formation which combines these substances to give the form of the body has its origin in field type forces.
Here is the opening words of an article in the latest edition of New Scientist
Genes are given far to much credit for life’s formative forces.
Neither do I, but I also don’t believe in formative fields.
Rather, it is the interaction between the intra and extra-cellular environment, and the DNA, that gives rise to such things as tissue-formation, organs, morphological form and so on. DNA looked at in isolation will never be able to tell you what that DNA “results in” without, at least, supplying a rather detailed cellular context. You need local conditions factored in.
It isn’t necessary to postulate an entirely new type of physics to explain morphology, or to accept that mere DNA sequence doesn’t tell you everything about how a living organism comes to be, how it’s tissues and organs form and so on.
And whence comes this ‘bioelectricity’? How does it correctly attach itself to the organism? All hell would break loose if starfish biolelectricity somehow found its way into a frog zygote … but no, nothing to do with genes, those selfish bastards. It’s a veritable Paradigm Shift. Again.
Is it related to membrane potential?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Membrane_potential
If it fluctuates spatially and temporally, then there is a potential (pun intended) for signaling.
stcordova,
Could well be, but this is also under genetic control.
Are you trying to argue that CSI is bunk?
OMagain,
If I believed that evidence of adaption explained evolution then yes it is answered.
IMHO adaption and evolution are very different things. The Lenski experiment showed that random mutation and selection can create an adaptive change.
It, however, did not explain how bacteria got the ability to transport citrate across the cell in the first place. Or how bacteria evolved mobility if it was indeed evolved.
The debate is still open if you make a change to existing information are you creating new information or simply modifying it.
Can we explain the diversity of life on earth through the modification of existing information?
Then your opinion isn’t humble, and of no worth.
Then that’s it, case closed. Adaptation IS evolution.
Irrelevant. The Lenski experiment is not purported to explain how every adaptation evolves, nor did the E coli in the experiment evolve everything E coli can do, in that experiment. And nobody ever claimed otherwise.
No, that debate isn’t open. It isn’t even a debate. You’re being tutored and just refusing to listen. Your role in this is not one of an equal expert who has an informed opinion and arguments worth listening to. You are like a child learning basic arithemetic for the first time. It’s not time to start debating what numbers “really are” or what it “really means to multiply”. You should be quiet and try to understand, rather than interrupt the teacher.
We can explain it through both the modification and deletion of existing information and the creation of new information. For reasons already explained.
RMNS can increase information because God designed it that way.
But this increase is restricted in a certain dimension. A rabbit cannot evolve into a potato or back to a bacterium, but it can evolve into a better adapted rabbit.
I pointed out an issue here as to the limits of selection:
So no, rmns can’t evolve in an unbounded way to more complex systems, it will actually prevent evolution of more complexity in many cases. The peacock’s tail (which made Darwin sick) is a good example of things natural selection should select against, not for.
Why do you suppose colewd refuses to accept that?
The usefulness of an answer is often directly proportional to the things it can be applied. That can be applied to everything.
Is it an example of Intelligent Intervention then? It’s not clear what you are saying.
I have a couple more questions, which you will probably not attempt to answer.
1) If natural selection should select against the peacock’s tail, what prevents it from disappearing? There’s certainly variation among individuals sufficient for selection to work on.
2) Why shouldn’t natural selection include sexual selection, which favors such ornaments? And thus why is natural selection unable to produce such things?
What makes you think they aren’t going to disappear!
See:
http://animals.mom.me/endangered-peafowl-5258.html
They’re alive today because of the absence of selection pressure in the past when there were less humans. So again, natural selection has to be absent to help facilitate survival. Darwin’s theory works except when it utterly fails (which is often).
Also, peafowl/peacock’s were recently created, so it’s taken a while for real natural selection to work its course.
Independent of the Bible, the supposed millions of years of fossil record is suspect because of the Faint Young Sun paradox.
Sexual selection happens, but it’s no solution to Darwin’s problem. Females that perpetuate inefficiency in the male form, and vice versa, are a liability to the species as a whole. Relative fitness can be high between individuals even if fitness (reproductive success) of the species is declining. A female might find one male more attractive than another, right up until the point they all get killed and the species line is extinct.
We know as a matter of principle, females could be capable of choosing bad partners by putting hormones ahead of what might be more sensible choices in the long run. Same for males. We saw in the mouse utopia experiments that sexual selection didn’t save the population from extinction, did it? How is sexual selection faring in the world of birds today? It’s not slowing down their extinction rate is it? Natural selection isn’t originating more bird species under this increased selection pressure is it? Darwin was wrong. That should be blatantly obvious.
Where we see RMNS work really well is with microbes and evolution of antibiotic resistance. But RMNS is devastating to birds. Darwin’s theories are always right except when they are dead wrong.
stcordova,
The faint young sun paradox is suspect because of the billions of years evidence for life.
The faint young sun is notorious for making fake fossils roughly in the expected sequence expected of evolution.
So the fact that Sal has no explanation for, well, anything, doesn’t matter.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
It’s not just organisms that are fossilised of course. Deep into the Precambrian, there are fossil sedimentary environments.
YEC using one Old Earth expectation to try and dismiss another … that’s a paradox, alright.
Ciruclar reasoning. There are lots of other clocks that disagree with the billions of years evidence of life. Like many things, there is a rush to judgment in the mainstream.
One can’t minimize the problem posed by astrophysics. 500 million years ago during the Cambrian, the Earth should have been an ice ball and there should have been no evolution. One can’t run away from basic physics like that. It doesn’t mean necessarily the universe or Earth or the Solar System are young, but it does suggest the fossil record is young.
I’m not saying the YECs are necessarily right either, even though I personally believe they are, but from a data standpoint, surely there are some unresolved questions being suppressed because of rush to judgement.
I used to be an Old-Earth evolutionist. I would still be and Old Earth Evolutionist if it had a compelling empirical case. Evolution does not, Old Fossil record doesn’t either, Old Earth has some good points, Old Universe many good points. But no need to settle the issue today, to paraphrase Scarlett O’Hara, “there is another day.”
Yeah, we’ve seen your commitment to the evidence.
You have none for your position.
Glen Davidson
Says the guy who is the one suppressing data so he can rush to judgement.
Is this what irony given physical form looks like?
So many theories!
Mung,
If you see every biological phenomenon as a ‘theory of evolution’, I guess …
stcordova,
No, it definitely is not! Express it in propositional logical form of a circular argument, if you can.
stcordova,
Ha ha. A rush to judgement that took many years of painstaking work, overturned by a couple of anomalous readings reported on some Creationist website.
stcordova,
According to many, 500 (and a bit more) million years ago the earth was an ‘ice ball’.
Fortunately it gets a significant amount of its heat from radiation – that thing that doesn’t decay like physicists say, according to Creationists who argue with basic physics every goddamned day!
You are confusing natural selection with something else. Natural selection doesn’t prevent extinction, nor does anyone claim it does. Whatever the fate of the population, the question, which you ignore, is why peacock tails are not getting shorter. Nor was natural selection absent in the past. Why would you suppose that humans are the only feature of the peacock’s environment capable of exerting selection?
What is your evidence for this assertion? Are peacocks a separate kind, and if so does that kind include Congo peafowl (Afropavo)? Or other pheasants?
Bet you didn’t think so before you became a creationist. Face it, your “evidence” is all of the sort that’s convincing only to someone who’s already a creationist.
There’s a huge literature on sexual selection, which includes a number of ways in which choosing “inefficiency in the male form” might be advantageous to females. And perhaps not detrimental to the species too, though that’s not relevant to natural selection. What’s your evidence that peacock tails are bad for the species?
Natural selection doesn’t originate species. Sexual selection doesn’t act to prevent extinction. Your understanding of evolutionary biology is faulty. Your idea of Darwin is wrong, not Darwin.
In other news, your YEC assumptions seriously impede your ability to consider and discuss the evidence of evolutionary biology. Perhaps we should start at the beginning and discuss the evidence for the age of the earth and its biota. I’ll see your faint sun and raise you radiometric dating, the geological column, molecular phylogenetics, faunal succession, plate tectonics, and our ability to see objects billions of light years away.
And none of it refutes Last Thursdayism.
It’s physical stuff. It’s made by chemistry, following the laws of physics. “Information” is a word used to describe a thing. It is not a thing.
Perhaps you should work on learning the difference between “words”, “things” and “metaphors” before you make an even bigger idiot of yourself.
If ever there was a prime example of a group of people that simply do not understand the relationship between symbols and reality, it is creationists. DNA can be described in language that uses words like information, or code, or so on, but the use of words that have other connotations in our language does not constrain the physical behavior of the chemistry that is being imperfectly described. The conceptual gap between your language and the reality under discussion suggests that you may never understand why your question is meaningless.
I think he’s big enough now.
No shit. What is wrong with these people. It’s like you check the hen house in the morning and there are10 eggs. Then you check in the afternoon and there are fifteen eggs. Where did the numbers come from? Sure, the chickens laid the eggs, but where did the numbers come from? How the Hell did a chicken come up with the number 15? That requires intelligence! All this crap about information is just precisely that fucking stupid. Information theory describes reality, it isn’t a thing that has to come from somewhere.
He’s certainly a big enough coward when it comes to providing his definition or committing to a position. Just ignores the answers he been given a dozen times and keeps on chanting the same IDiot lies, then whines everyone is so mean to him. He’s like Joe Gallien but without the obscenities and the porn.
Neither do I postulate a new type of physics. Physics is a science which explains inanimate matter. We don’t need a new physics, we need a science suitable to life. When we apply physics to living form we turn it into dead matter and all we will learn to understand from this is dead matter. We need a life science which is not frozen in the moment but involves the mobility of form in time and space.
Think about the objects made from the creativity of an inventor or designer. The objects can be understood in terms of physics but the creativity cannot be understood in like manner.
And neither do I believe in a formative field hovering over a body working on it like some external constructor.
Good article in the latest Scientific American about producing “mini-brains” (essentially brain tissue with some brain structure) from stem cells, simply by controlling the development environment for those cells. This article emphasizes exactly your point, that exactly the same DNA could have been induced to produce the tissues (and some of the structure) of ANY organ by proper manipulation of the development environment.
Bioelectricity is not something I have made up, it is an observed phenomenon.
From Encyclopædia Britannica
Your questions are like someone who asks how steam attaches itself to water molecules in order to form raindrops. Matter, electricity and electric fields are not separate things, they are all aspects of the same entity. And in my opinion formative fields are as much a feature of organisms as physical substance is.
I am not saying that formative fields and electrical fields are the same thing. What I am saying is that biologists have been studying fields and gradients for quite some time. They cannot be ignored.
No matter where you think their origin lies, their importance for development cannot be denied.
This is a good example of the life forces contained in the different cell types. Stem cells have vast regenerative capabilities whereas in becoming neurons the cells have given up this ability but they enable consciousness. Plants have great regenerative potential but show little sign of being conscious, whereas humans have little regenerative power by comparison but make up for it in consciousness. Salamanders fall somewhere in between these extremes.