Here’s a simple experiment one can actually try. Take a bag of M&M’s, and without peeking reach in and grab one. Eat it. Then grab another and return it to the bag with another one, from a separate bag, of the same colour. Give it a shake. I guarantee (and if you tell me how big your bag is I’ll have a bet on how long it’ll take) that your bag will end up containing only one colour. Every time. I can’t tell you which colour it will be, but fixation will happen.
This models the simple population process of Neutral Drift. Eating is death, duplication is reproduction, and the result is invariably a change in frequencies, right through to extinction of all but one type. You don’t have to alternate death and birth; choose any scheme you like short of peeking in the bag and being influenced by residual frequencies (ie: frequency-dependent Selection), and you will end up with all one colour.
Is Chance a cause here? Well … yes, in a sense it is, in the form of sample error. Survival and reproduction are basically a matter of sampling the genes of the previous generation. More random samples are a distortion of the larger population than aren’t, so, inexorably, your future populations will move away from any prior makeup, increasing some at the expense of others till only one variant remains.
Selection is a consistent bias upon this basic process. If different colours also differed a little in weight, say, more of some would be at the bottom of the bag than others, so you’d be more likely to pick one type than another. In more trials, the type more likely to be picked would be picked more often, to express it somewhat tautologously. You’d get a sampling bias.
Both of these processes are random – or stochastic, to use the preferred term. In reality, they are variations of the same process, with continuously varying degrees of bias from zero upwards. It makes no sense to call selection nonrandom, unless by ‘random’ you mean unbiased. Where there is no bias, all is Drift. But turning up the selective heat does not eliminate drift – sample error – and so does not eliminate stochasticity.
With a source of new variation, these processes render evolution inevitable. Even with a brand new mutation, with no selective advantage whatsoever, 1/Nth of the time (where N is the population size) it will become the sole survivor. That’s the baseline. If there is a selective advantage, it will be more likely and quicker to fix, on the average. If at a selective disadvantage, it will be less likely and slower.
Conversely, without a source of new variation, all existing variation would be squeezed out of the population, and evolution would stop.
Start here.
http://www.talkorigins.org/pdf/comdesc.pdf
It’s just a layman’s primer, but it’s a good outline.
I’m curious about that scientific consensus. Can you cite the names of scientists who opposed the Copernican model, particularly after Galileo observed the phases of Venus?
And what about quantum theory — sure the most counterintuitive theory of all time. Can you site any establishment opposition?
In what way? It merely serves as an obvious example of how environments differ, and being well adapted to one usually entails being worse in another.
How all what works? It’s how adaptation works, yes. It’s not the complete mechanism of evolution, it’s simply environmental adaptation. Since the aquatic life is so markedly different from a fully terrestrial life, it’s simply all the more obvious how highly adapting to one will negatively impact one’s capabilities in the other.
What else could there be? Even if whole new body plans were designed, what would you actually be designing? New genes. Why shouldn’t mutation be able to make and rearrange and change genes and their regulation through mutation? Where is the magic barrier where additional mutations can no longer change and impact phenotype? At what point can we no longer add together pennies and reach a dollar?
Piltdown2,
29 Evidences for Macroevolution
Piltdown2 seems to think that new body plans evolve at the level of squirrels to birds or something. He should read Meyer or something to set him straight. Once a body plan includes lots of fiddly bits, it no longer has the capacity to evolve a new major schema.
The evolution of body schema would have occurred in the HOX genes before the critters evolved complex limbs and such. The origin of body plans would be invisible to fossil hunters.
Yes, if you count light blue.
Joe Felsenstein,
Actually, the M&M’s originated with me (also a Brit)! I felt that an international audience would have a common reference point. The American Smartie would appear to be some species of Refresher.
Incidentally, Joe G offers his analysis on his not-for-the-sensitive blog. “Umm if someone is choosing what color to put into the first bag from the second bag, then that is a form of artificial selection”.
The facepalm is, I believe, an internationally recognised gesture.
No, your idea is wrong, because you are not thinking about the logic of it. You used Joe’s example of the numbers on the peoples head, and you thought that you could just keep counting down the generations of black, without adding on generations to blue. As we go through each new generation of black, blue also goes through a new generation. You aren’t having ancestors from two generations ago, mating with offspring two generations down, as a general rule of how we consider population dynamics.
And ok, this is just a thought experiment, as a way of imaging how feasible something is, life is obviously much more more complicated, but we at least have to deal with a framework that makes a little bit of sense-numbers represent reality. The number could well be something in between what you are claiming and what I am-but you are suggesting that a series of deaths and births which we run on the computer as sometimes taking more than a million tries is close to 1000, and I am suggesting its much closer to one million, but could be half that, 500,000 but still is orders of magnitude more than your numbers game which lacks logic. One million, or 500,000 or 300,000-either way its a very high number for a population of only 1000. If you got to a population of 10,000 the number would be closer to a billion. The higher the number, the less likely it is to ever occur, little yet occur with any kind of frequency worth considering viable.
When I pointed out the obvious flaw of you dividing the time by the population size, you were so fixated on the numbers, that you didn’t consider the reality of those numbers. I see this happen in people who consider themselves scientists and extrapolate that to a great possession of all things logic-when they are not.
You were asking me what is my education, as if you thought that your education gave you some special appeal to authority which makes you right, and it doesn’t. Its not just a numbers problem, its thinking about what those numbers mean. That is how you consider four births and four deaths as being able to be only one generation, because you think your numbers told you so. This is why I don’t take people’s appeal to their authority as intimidating.
Thank the Creator!
But why in the world would a Darwinian-like process produce a Hox genes kind of network, with its incredible amount of plasticity in the first place? There is no logical way to imagine that happen as a piece by piece building up of marginally favored traits, it is way too complicated and inter-dependent of a system.
This is a great example of how design makes a much better explanation for this result than Darwin does. Darwinian random mutations to build a hox gene network-how much suspension of disbelief can you expect people to maintain in the fairy tales of reconstruction?
phoodoo,
Phoodoo,
Yor latest reply is long but still short of what I asked for. It does not contain a recipe for counting the number of generations.
I think it is safe to assume that no definition will be forthcoming. Absent that, you need to choose one of the definitions provided. You don’t seem to like mine. How about Joe’s? Do you find it reasonable?
What you mean is there is no way to design such complicated and interdependent systems. Evolution can integrate thousands of dimensions of fitness. It’s why we use GA’s to regulate power grids and solve otherwise intractable problems.
I don’t quite get your point here, however when you think of GA’s keep in mind they are designed as well, and they are designed to reach an outcome. No GA’s are designed to just run wild and see if anything useful ever happens (because nothing useful ever would), which is what evolution claims occurred.
Every death and birth substitution is one generation, ok, go with that.
According to that, there have been hundreds of millions of generations in the U.S. since WW2. Most people count a handful; Baby boom, X, Y, Millennials. Is that really what you mean?
At long last, phoodoo.
Unfortunately, this definition does not work well. Let me explain that using a very simple example.
Take a town with N=100 inhabitants. Assume that every person lives 70 years and that every couple has two children, so the population always remains the same. A person dies once every 70 years/100 = 0.7 year = 255 days. Another person is born once every 255 days.
If you count a generation as the time between deaths, you have a generation of 255 days in this case.
Things get even worse in a town with N=1000 inhabitants. A generation, as defined in your proposal, is 25.5 days.
This is nonsense.
No, but it would hundred of thousands or a million years to get one new novel mutation in one person on the planet to become fixed in the entire population in the world. You are not suggesting it could happen in 65 years are you? Simultaneous deaths and births cancel each other out.
olegt,
You seem to think that this principle of spreading a mutation through a population is only about humans. We are talking about all of the animal kingdom. Of course a generation could be 255 days. What is the lifespan of a fly?
Let’s take houseflies, phoodoo. Their lifespan is one day.
Take a colony of flies maintained in the same way. Each pair of flies produces on average two flies (the rest are killed or die because of a lack of food). The colony is maintained at N = 1000 members.
Since the lifespan is 1 day, 1000 flies die every day and are replaced by 1000 new flies. The time between deaths is 24 hours/1000 = 86 seconds. Your way of counting generations suggests that one generation = 86 seconds in this case.
It gets worse if the colony size is doubled to N = 2000 flies. Then deaths happen twice as often. Your method of counting suggests that one generation = 43 seconds.
It’s not about humans, phoodoo, and not about flies. Your methodology is fatally flawed. The generation time depends on the number of organisms, which is completely wrong.
Generally, take organisms whose lifespan is T. Each organism dies and leaves behind one other organism. What’s the generation time? Obviously T.
In your methodology, however, it’s not. In a colony with a constant size N, N organisms die during one lifespan T. The time between deaths is thus T/N. That is what you call a generation. For large N, this misdefined generation time T/N is much shorter than the lifespan. That’s a fatal flaw in your reasoning.
Then your definition is faulty.
By the way, did you ever review the data above, which addressed your previous claim?
No. On the other hand, if we have a stable population of a million, and there is one neutral mutation per individual per replication, meaning there are millions of neutral mutations floating around in the population, then one mutation will fix on average per generation.
We tested that with phoodoo’s collapsing population example, and it gave very close results to our method, which is to count 1/N, N = population, towards each generation for each replication. With the same parameters as above, after 100 trials,
1/N method, 8.66
Counting Mothers method, 8.49
Nature is not constrained by your inability to imagine it.
Zachriel’s example nicely illustrates the absurdity of phoodoo’s definition.
With N=300,000,000 people in the US, a person dies somewhere every 0.3 seconds. Declaring the time between consecutive deaths, 0.3 seconds, as one generation is sheer nonsense.
This is an unsubstantiated argument from incredulity. Pretty standard from creationists, including the intelligent design variant, but hardly convincing.
“Design” is not an explanation. Try answering the who, what, when, where, why, and how questions before claiming you’ve solved the problem.
I refer you to Thomas Ray’s Tierra. You’re just as wrong about this as you were when you claimed:
(An error you have yet to acknowledge, I note.)
I think it is abundantly clear, phoodoo, that defining the generation time as the time between consecutive deaths makes no sense. In a steady population of N organisms, the generation time scales as 1/N: the more individuals there are, the shorter the generation time so defined.
It shouldn’t scale like that. The time of a generation in any given household should not depend on how many other households there are in a town, the state, or the country as a whole. So your definition makes no sense.
What about Joe’s definition (which is, as he points out, the standard definition used in population genetics)?
I think it is entirely sensible. A member of generation X gives birth to a member of generation X+1. What’s wrong with that?
That’s how it works. Molecules, which expressed genes are, simply interact through physics. Some stick together, some repel each other, some catalyze reactions and so on and so forth. So since they mutate slowly over generations, their properties change, so sometimes one molecule sticks to another under certain circumstances. That circumstance could be “lactose is present in the cell cytoplasm”, and so the protein that sticks to a stretch of DNA lets go of that piece of DNA (because it interacts with the lactose present) and now that piece of DNA can be transcribed and an enzyme that metabolizes lactose is produced until there is no more lactose left in the cell cytoplasm, and so the protein reattaches to the DNA and prevents transcription of the enzyme.
Except that it is not and I have just explained how in a perfectly logical way.
Design can explain any concievable observation in an ad-hoc fashion. What matters is what model best fits the data. Design doesn’t have a model, beyond the blanket statement “design”. How? Where? When? Nobody seems to want to take a stab at a falsifiable model. It’s all evolution can’t (contrary to fact) so it must be blanket-design.
blockquote cite=”comment-38249″>phoodoo:Darwinian random mutations to build a hox gene network-how much suspension of disbelief can you expect people to maintain in the fairy tales of reconstruction?
This is hilariously ironic coming from the “magic made it instantaneously” brigade. Sorry, I don’t believe in magic. I only know of natural processes.
That is simply incorrect. Both in terms of not being designed to run wild (many are) and in terms of nothing useful ever happening (it does).
Two simple examples:
This GA is designed to see if “anything useful happens” and then work from there through simple sex and selection:
http://boxcar2d.com/
It randomly attaches spinning wheels to randomly mutating polygons until it happens to produce a solution that moves. The solution was never designed into it, it is being environmentally determined by the shape of the ground.
Anyone can make such simple GA that just searches blindly for “something that works”, then retains it through selection and slowly modifies it through randomly mutating such features.
Another such GA is this one:
Evolution is a blind watchmaker
In real evolution, the overarching “goal” of the landscape is successful reproduction.
Phoodoo’s proposed definition of the term “generation” is clearly the product of P’s adamantine resistance to the concept of evolution, more than anything else. Even so, it is a definition of the term “generation”. So now we’ve got the phoodoo-generation concept, and the felsenstein-generation concept, and various other generation concepts which have been proposed, and sometimes even used, by various other people.
How many phoodoo-generations does it take for a mutation to reach the point of fixation in a breeding population? Or is that even a meaningful question for someone who accepts the phoodoo-generation concept?
N^2 phoodoos, which equals N felsensteins. N is the population size.
Based on intuition and the limits of evolution demonstrated in the lab, I simply have a lack of faith in the power of Darwinian evolution for large scale changes.
From the abstract of a 2005 paper by the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium: “Through comparison with the human genome, we have generated a largely complete catalogue of the genetic differences that have accumulated since the human and chimpanzee species diverged from our common ancestor, constituting approximately thirty-five million single-nucleotide changes, five million insertion/deletion events, and various chromosomal rearrangements. We use this catalogue to explore the magnitude and regional variation of mutational forces shaping these two genomes, and the strength of positive and negative selection acting on their genes. In particular, we find that the patterns of evolution in human and chimpanzee protein-coding genes are highly correlated and dominated by the fixation of neutral and slightly deleterious alleles.” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16136131/
That’s really pretty silly. Kinda like saying based on intuition and the limits of geological forces demonstrated in the lab I doubt the power of erosion to carve the Grand Canyon or plate tectonics to raise the Alps.
There are literally hundreds of places on line you can go to read about the evidence for macro-evolution. Like this one from U. of Indiana
SPECIATION / MACROEVOLUTION EVIDENCE
Or this paper from Nature
Macroevolution: Examples from the Primate World
or the ever popular
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution
Macro-evolution is nothing more than the accumulation of micro-evolutionary changes over longer times with a few additional selection pressures (geographic isolation, behavioral isolation, etc) at the population level. It’s the identical genetic variation and selection mechanisms at the individual level in both micro-E and macro-E.
If I understand Felstenstein correctly, I think our generations are essentially the same. Assume that all lifespans in the population are the same and that all are born on the same day. New ones are born, old ones die.
Then you take the time of a lifespan to figure out how long it takes for the number of generations required for a mutation to drift through an entire population. You can call the time 1/2 of the entire lifespan (the age of child bearing) and figure from there.
No. See this comment.
The geocentric model as passed down from Aristotle and Ptolemy held for centuries. It was overturned during the Middle Ages based on observable events. However, from Wikipedia, Galileo “met with opposition from astronomers, who doubted heliocentrism due to the absence of an observed stellar parallax.” I do not know the names of these astronomers.
Not following your line of reasoning here to jump to quantum theory. I don’t see it as counter intuitive and know of no establishment opposition. A theory that does strike me as counter intuitive, aside from evolution, is relativity. The idea that time is relative while the speed of light is constant is hard to grapple with. But through observation, it was proven correct, and it’s initial detractors were won over.
We probably agree on every other scientific theory. But with evolution, I look at the same evidence you see, and rather than see confirmation of the theory, all I see are the improbabilities. May be some form of cultural phenomenon. Recent polls show at least half the population has doubts about Darwinism.
Can you name some? Big question is how do you compute they’re improbable? Humans are notoriously bad at estimating probabilities. Do you take all the consilient evidence from the fossil and genetic records into account when doing the guesstimates?
Of course it’s a cultural phenomenon. It’s called religion and the teaching that humans were somehow specially created.
Which has not one iota of effect on the theory’s veracity.
You’re right about humans being notoriously bad at estimating probabilities. So instead of me saying “We probably agree on every other scientific theory”, please allow me to restate as “We might find we agree on other topics” – age of earth, existence of black holes, and supply and demand curves in economics to name a few.
Not a computation, just from observing how systems degrade over time without constant maintenance, and how some form of engineering is required to design new machines.
I see that there is a relationship between species based on fossil and genetic records.
This doesn’t explain it – plenty of non-religious people have issues with Darwinism. Conversely, I could refer to evolution as the atheist creation story.
I didn’t ask you about other scientific theories. I specifically asked you about the improbabilities you claimed to see in evolutionary theory. Please don’t put words in my mouth, it’s unsanitary. Now, about those claimed evolutionary improbabilities…
What animal or plant species have you observed “degrading over time”? Please be specific in how you identified this claimed degradation.
Yep. It’s called common descent
In the US religious beliefs explain the pattern quite nicely, along with the rather poor job most US public schools do of teaching science. The rest of the western world generally speaking doesn’t have the same Fundamentalist fervor as US Christians do so they don’t have the same science illiteracy issues.
And the poor job done by US schools is also a result of religion, partly that is: a result of teachers, school superintendents, and local/state Board of Education members fearing they will be hounded out of their jobs by the Christian Supremacists. As a direct result of that fear, even if they themselves accept evolution, teachers are quite reluctant to teach it thoroughly and accurately. If state curriculum standards demand that the topic of evolution be covered in class, teachers may still gloss over it in hopes of avoiding the threats made by CS parents who show up to demand that the school stop teaching their kids “evilution”.
Conversely, I’ve never heard of a public school teacher who has restrained themself from sneering that “evolution is only a theory; I don’t teach that it’s correct” out of fear of threats from the atheist community. Despite the Christian Supremacists’ constant sniveling about persecution of christians in the US, those christian teachers don’t face any repercussions for failing to do their job teaching, unless they actually become deranged enough to burn crosses onto students’ skin.
So, yeah, the root cause of people NOT accepting the theory of evolution is the pernicious influence of religion.
Your question “Can you name some?” was not explicit. I added Scientific Theories in brackets because I thought that was what you were asking and I wanted to make it clear what I was answering. As to the rest, I’ve explained myself as well as I can.
Weaksauce excuse given the context of my question. Here’s the exchange again.
P2: “But with evolution, I look at the same evidence you see, and rather than see confirmation of the theory, all I see are the improbabilities. ”
TH: “Can you name some? Big question is how do you compute they’re improbable?”
It would take some serious mental gyrations to misinterpret that.
I accept entirely that providing zero explanations for your claims is the best you can do.
Piltdown2,
Half what population? Oh, the American population! 🙂
Half of a population has a below average IQ too. It’s meaningless.
I haven’t attempted to address your doubts, because I can’t. As phoodoo shows more graphically, anyone can deny whatever they like in the face of any and every piece of evidence adduced. All I will say is that a strong candidate for large scale change over many generations is cumulative small scale change over fewer. It’s obvious, really, and not at all circular. Whatever else you may think happens, this does. Snowflakes build mile deep ice sheets; the Amazon is made of raindrops.
Note that the process described is ‘memoryless’. Once an old variant has been lost, there is no ‘mean’ to regress to. Your expectation that species get tugged back to some ‘attractor’ requires that that sits outside the species in some way. In the Mind of God, or some Platonic essence. But as far as can be deduced, the blueprint for a species resides solely in the genomes of its current population members. And that blueprint is constantly in flux, with or without selection.
There appears to be no anchor, and no higher-taxon discontinuity – the total change across wider taxonomic groups is of the same order per generation as that across smaller, from genetic evidence. But it’s up to you, really.
Piltdown2,
Which, I would say, is a fair summary of the status of evolution in scientific circles circa 1900!
First what you are saying is only that YOU are comfortable making extrapolations about things which you have no evidence for. You think a beak size fluctuating over time could lead to a fifth leg, or a new head, given enough time and and some great new advantage that the other finches don’t possess right now. That’s not a data theory that’s a belief which makes your world view more comfortable. You see evidence for common descent and just choose to believe it could happen this way with not only zero evidence, but with evidence which strongly refutes this possibility.
Like the fact that in every lab test we have ever conducted, the organisms always do return to a previous state no matter what mutations we try to induce in them. All of the bacteria and fly experiments over the years, the thousands upon thousands of generations, don’t ever produce any forward progression. gee isn’t that strange? Not if “anyone can deny whatever they like in the face of any and every piece of evidence adduced” I guess.
Furthermore we don’t even see any evidence for these random morphological aberrations which could actually lead anywhere. But according to your theory they should be literally everywhere. Why no new light sensitive patches of skin randomly popping up on the soles of a newborns foot. Or a preliminary hole in the back of an organisms back which could lead to a new type of ear one day?
It sounds preposterous, but this is how your side believes new novel functions begin. And yet we see NONE. How can that possibly be? Aren’t there some new, perhaps neutral oddities that are in the process of evolving right now, that will one day lead to an entirely new appendage or organ?
Allan, I suggest you have never really thought about the details of your theory as much as you claim, but that’s ok, that’s up to you. Just keep reading the latest scientific literature, because with every new report, we see more and more pieces of a puzzle which don’t fit Darwinian evolution, the evidence grows everyday, but you ignore it.
I bet if you did a survey of all molecular biologists studying the field right now, there would be a greater number today that doubts Darwinian style evolution, then did only 10 years ago. And it will keep growing, despite the fact that in their profession, doubting Darwin is a type of career suicide in many universities.
phoodoo,
Do you have the same problem with the theory of Plate tectonics which has also never been witnessed?
Micro plate tectonics can be measured.
http://www.iris.edu/hq/files/programs/education_and_outreach/aotm/14/1.GPS_Background.pdf
I suppose it’s just religious faith that causes one to believe that micro movements can add up to macro movements.
Your faith in evolution is your knowledge that if something moves a little, it can cover a larger distance over time? That’s all it takes to convince you?
Skeptics are so discerning.
Him and 99.9% of all the science professionals on the planet. You know, the ones who actually study and work with the huge amounts of positive evidence for evolution every day.
Lenski’s E coli didn’t return to a previous state.
Lenski’s E coli evolved a major new beneficial trait.
(cough cough) Apo-A1 Milano.
You’d lose your bet.
Denial. It’s not just a river in Egypt.
No. It’s that fact plus all the rest of the 150+ years’ worth of consilient evidence from hundreds of different scientific fields showing macro-evolution actually happened which convinces us.