TSZ has made much ado about P(T|H), a conditional probability based on a materialistic hypothesis. They don’t seem to realize that H pertains to their position and that H cannot be had means their position is untestable. The only reason the conditional probability exists in the first place is due to the fact that the claims of evolutionists cannot be directly tested in a lab. If their claims could be directly tested then there wouldn’t be any need for a conditional probability.
If P(T|H) cannot be calculated it is due to the failure of evolutionists to provide H and their failure to find experimental evidence to support their claims.
I know what the complaints are going to be- “It is Dembski’s metric”- but yet it is in relation to your position and it wouldn’t exist if you actually had something that could be scientifically tested.
keiths, to colewd:
Mung:
Never mind, Mung. Your grasp of fitness landscapes seems to be on a par with your understanding of P(T|H):
keiths:
Mung:
Unbelievable, indeed.
DNA_Jock commented:
colewd,
No it isn’t. Yockey’s a physicist for starters, like a proponent of similar ideas Fred Hoyle. If you have something from an actual origin of life researcher I’d be more interested; this kind of crap has been debunked over and over. You seem to have completely glossed over the fact that protein is not proven to be necessary for life, and you are simply guessing at the density and explorability of functional protein spaces of particular lengths.
Why protein? Yes, I know modern life has it.
So you think short functional proteins are impossible and longer proteins cannot be made from shorter ones. Do you have any, y’know, evidence for this? Got a map of functional sequence space handy?
colewd,
They don’t at all. Telephone numbers aren’t structures. Prise a number or sentence from the page on which it is written and they just kind of float about. There is no interaction, and nothing linking them beyond the medium on which they are daubed, or the symbolised linkage in someone’s mind who remembers them. They are not polymers. If you can get a telephone number to fold, bind a complementary sequence, exert osmotic pressure, or act as a food store, I’d be well impressed.
I don’t think you understand the meaning of “strawman”. You stated that the theory of evolution and intelligent design creationism are competing hypotheses. You’re wrong. There is no scientific hypothesis of IDC.
In other words, there is no evidence supporting intelligent design creationism. That’s true. That means it is not a scientific theory.
Yeah. Seems they’ll let just anyone publish in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.
I’d not want anyone to see the fitness landscape of my Weasel program either.
I just love the games of “Hide the Evidence” that go on here at the skeptical zone. At least now we know what the H symbolizes.
Mung,
Anyone who actually
a) understands what a fitness landscape is,
b) understands how Weasel works, and
c) possesses a modicum of mathematical skill,
can easily figure out how the fitness landscape of Weasel is structured.
You think I’m hiding it from you, but that’s only because you can’t see what is plainly visible to the knowledgeable.
I’m here to learn keiths. Scoff away.
All Mung’s words so it can’t be quote mining, right Mung?. Pay no attention to the ellipses.
See. There is something we can agree on.
Allan Miller,
Do you have evidence of life without proteins? Without this evidence I assume they are required. Oh I’m sorry, you have a very solid just so story for life without proteins
🙂 This inference standard is really cool. Anything we can think of becomes science.
Mung,
The evidence suggests otherwise.
Allan Miller,
Yes they are. They reside as digital bits inside memory in your phone. Electrons are really part of the digital world 🙂 Again the sequential space of all these sequences are defined by the same equation.
Allan Miller,
I’lll bet you have even a cooler just so story on how this works. Sorry Allan, Mung is rubbing off on me 🙂
Patrick,
Yes, in my world of testability and the scientific method it is not a scientific theory but neither is the theory of evolution. Both are based on the inference standard. Define a mechanism and show a major evolutionary transition was caused by it I will change my position.
BTW when you change a position I take and start to argue against the position you created in my world that is creating a straw man.
colewd,
Testability. Like finding tiktaalik, for example?
Mung,
If publication in the Journal of Theoretical Biology is your standard for whether something should be accepted or not … welcome aboard! Evolution it is, then. There are many volumes to wade through.
colewd,
Yes. For exa…
You didn’t even let me finish!
Anything you can’t conceive of can be simply dismissed without further thought. Nice one.
The entire structure of protein coding is performed by RNA. It’s not just involved as an intermediate, it actually does the job. Sure, proteins are intimately involved in this process now, but it is clear that RNA came first in that system, from multiple lines of evidence.
Your fantasy of proteins condensing from 20 acids in a soup is hopelessly naive; a critique of a position not held. Sure it’s impossible. But that’s like saying you can’t build a skyscraper because a pile of sandwiches in excess of 15 or so will fall over. The problem is not based on some dumb calculation as if 20 acids and 100 residues form some kind of minimum. It’s chemistry. Even a dimer is hard to achieve and sustain in solution.
colewd,
Say my phone is of the dial type …
You can write a string down. Any string you can write down can be assumed to be part of a space, depending on the length of that string. This is trivial. I could plant 10 trees in a row from 3 species. Look! I’ve created a ‘structure’ with 3^10 possibilities! The fact that you can write down the sequence of a polymer does not mean that it falls into the same class as other things you can write down (or plant in a row, or scratch on a stick).
And you certainly can’t infer from the clustering of ‘meaningful strings’ in one format what the clustering of ‘meaningful strings’ in any other is. The space of 11 digit strings includes all landline UK telephone numbers. They are clustered – most digits other than zero cannot be prefixes. Big deal. You cannot infer anything about any other space – say functional protein space – from such a fact. So why is it relevant?
colewd,
Yes, what is it about Creationists and their approach to science, fingers jabbed firmly in their ears? Meantime, you swallow Cordova’s speculations whole. Looks like you are not in the market for anything I say. Fine, I’ll stop talking to you.
Ooh, here’s a quote mine: “Modern science shows that the genome is the answer to all objections based on gaps at any level. There is no need for a theory of “Intelligent Design” to explain any gaps. Darwin’s theory of evolution is among the most well-established theories in science”
Who said this? Hubert P Yockey.
Of note: the sequence space of a 100-acid modern peptide is 20^100. The sequence space of the RNA coding for any 100-acid peptide is 4^300 (ignoring STOPs). The latter is 3 x 10^50 times bigger than the former. Does this mean it’s harder to find functional proteins in nucleotide space than protein space, ‘cos it’s bigger an’all?
Untrue. I present the past 150 years of biological research to counter that ridiculous statement. Even a pope (John Paul II) recognized this:
I’ll suggest you look into Lenski’s work with E. coli and the frame shift mutation that allowed a bacterium to process nylon, for just two examples.
Fortunately that’s not what I did. You referred to the IDC position as having an hypothesis in this very thread. You are free to retract that claim at any time.
You have, by the answers to my questions, demonstrated that you don’t understand the claims you think you are disputing.
If you can provide a scientific reference to where it is demonstrated that long protein chains are formed in their entirety by random sampling in biology then perhaps I’ll change my position.
But as others have already noted, you are attacking a strawman. And how far do you think you can go down that road? When you attack something that does not exist and “win” then what then?
For example, if you think you have spotted a crucial flaw in our understanding then why have you not published this work? There are many organisations desperate for ID content. I can list some if you like?
So, if you are so sure, will you be publishing? If not, why not?
OMagain,
“Dear Sir, I have a stunning refutation of evolution based upon the enormous size of protein sequence spaces above a certain threshold number of monomers and string length. No-one has been able to persuade me otherwise, despite my completely open mind on their just-so bullshit”.
Your paper has been accepted for publication! Please note, there is a small administration fee of $500 for all such papers. Send your remittance via Western Union to….
I wrote a more detailed OP on protein space 3 years back (3 years! Jeez, what am I doing with my life?)
That’s not a quote-mine, and I’ve pointed out before that Hubert Yockey is anti-ID. Like when he got accused of being a creationist source just because I quoted him.
Your side loves to have their cake and eat it too Allan.
There are no proteins in nucleotide sequence space. But you probably already know that. I hope.
Mung,
Well, that’s rather the point. I am supposed to gve a shit about Yockey because of what he said about protein space. But no, let’s drop him like a hot potato on every other issue. He only supports us here (and in fact, does not support us at all)! Le mangeur de gateau non mange, c’est toi.
How about you lot just stop quoting people altogether, except where directly germane? It always looks like quote mining, even if it isn’t. It wasn’t enough for colewd to point out the simple arithmetic of the situation, we have to get Nobel this and respected that in on the act to add gravitas, without adding anything to the discussion.
Mung,
Sure, there are no English sentences in ASCII bit space either. Are you really going to pretend you don’t understand the relationship of the two numbers to each other?
Allan Miller,
I don’t think any thing here is clear. You assume the current evolutionary mechanism to create your idea how this happened. Your mechanism (RMNS neutral theory etc) is highly unlikely based on simple statistics. You do have multiple lines of evidence but you don’t have a direct tested hypothes and you and don’t have a repeatable model so in my world you don’t have anything to build on except a house of cards. Have you ever thought that the mechanism that you base all your assumptions on could be wrong?
OMagain,
Was not aware I am attacking a straw man. What is the straw man i am attacking.
Patrick,
What novel proteins were created in these experiments? Did the enzyme that breaks down citrate already exist in e coli? This is the point I am trying to make that novel protein sequences are very unlikely formed by the current evolutionary paradigm. Maybe its about time to look for a new idea. Is intelligent design the answer? Only based on the inference standard. The standard that built the current evolutionary house of cards.
colewd,
http://ncse.com/cej/5/2/new-proteins-without-gods-help
Richardthughes,
Thanks for the reference.
Do you have any more detail on how the protein was formed. Was it a modification from another enzyme?
I know that multiple codons can code for the same amino acid. That doesn’t change the size of nucleotide sequence space. It also doesn’t change the size of amino acid sequence space. Do you say otherwise?
Very unlikely != impossible. And that’s all that is required.
What mechanism is that?
If it’s relevant, yes. If not, no.I don’t dismiss Yockey because of what he says about ID. And if something Yockey says about ID is relevant to a discussion I don’t fault people for quoting him.
I really don’t think we’re in disagreement here.
OMagain,
Mechanism is Random mutation natural selection along with population genetics and neutral theory.
Nylonase, in the second case I mentioned.
I know what point you’re making, it’s simply wrong. If you disagree with my assessment, show your math in detail and without using analogies.
Modern evolutionary theory is based on an enormous amount of evidence from a wide variety of scientific disciplines. You’re proposing to replace that with an argument from incredulity and the conjecture that “Somewhere, at some time, some entity did something somehow.” Color me unconvinced.
OMagain,
Thanks for the link. I see Allan has thought a lot about this problem. The thought that has added skepticism of the current mechanisms for me is trying to imagine designing a mid size protein like hemoglobin that performs complex function. How would we go about this process?
Patrick,
Do you have evidence of how this new enzyme evolved. Was it modification of another enzyme?
You disagree that the enzyme to break citrate already exists in ecoli? This is very clear from the Lenski experiment. As far as the mathematics behind protein folding lets table this for now because we agree there is a challenge here the question is the degree.
colewd,
I want to read Allan’s OP first so the discussion is not redundant.
I agree there is lots of evidence that change over time occurred. Unfortunately there is a lack of evidence that one specie evolved from another by a mechanism understood in nature.
Is there evidence for the Intelligent Design of species then?
That information is cited in the ncse article Richardthughes provided you. There’s some more recent work of interest too…
You may also have seen that ID-advocates did not contribute to that thread. Trying to imagine how one would design a mid-sized protein like hemoglobin is tough; I don’t think a biologist would even try. Finding and optimizing novel proteins via RM+NS is the way drug companies achieve this goal. So you have highlighted a problem for ID, not for evolutionary theory.
OMagain,
Intelligent design does not fill the void which is the mechanism. How did DNA sequence A change to DNA sequence B in order to create a new specie? Maybe one of the most provocative question in all of science.
DNA_Jock,
Thanks for the link. This is the detail I was looking for, but will take a few reads to absorb the experiments. We agree that the design of protein codes are beyond human capability at this point. What this all means will become a fascinating discussion going forward. Can you outline for me the drug discovery process you mentioned?