Random mutations cannot explain evolution of humans

[Wowbagger]

These quotes in this post are from: http://members.lol.li/twostone/E/psychon.html :

Quote:

The psychon theory has very concrete consequences, for instance there must be a limit to the number of human souls, which according to the latest demographic data could be even less than 7 billion.

Quote:

it seems plausible that preventing a dying person forcefully from dying can lead to the death of a baby animated by the same soul.

Quote:

World population cannot continue to grow as it has in recent decades.

So, if the population does continue to grow, would that refute psychon theory?

If we were to conduct a study on births and deaths, how would we be able to examine the psychons of each person, to see if they are shared or not, to know this was an active mechanism in the world?

Quote:

The simplest bacteria and viruses are so complex, that the probability for their random emergence is much lower than in the above example, even if all the necessary constituents are available in the right proportion.

Correct. But, Darwin's theory of Evolution is the opposite of random probability. Natural selection is a non-random algorithm of variety pruning in a population. It would actually be expected for complex things to emerge from the algorithm, much faster than random chance, alone.

Why would scientists support a theory that relied on random chance so strongly? Wouldn't such randomness defeat the scientific endeavor? Scientists are not (usually) that stupid! They mainly support algorithms, such as Evolution, which help them make predictions about life forms, that are NOT random.

Quote:

The information of the genetic code of HIV is less than 2.5 kilobyte. Computer science has shown how little this is. This genetic information can never be enough information for a virus to survive.

Read my previous post. It is NOT "how much" information that matters, but "how it is used". This arguments smacks of personal incredulity. Just because you cannot fathom how it can survive with so little information, does not mean that someone who has studied the virus more than you cannot ever figure it out.

[Dancing David]

Physics, jeez, well you can make physics mean almost anything.

[wogoga]

Originally Posted by Wowbagger

DNA is more like a recipe. ... In a cake recipe, for example, there is no one-to-one mapping of a letter in the text to a specific piece in the cake. The whole recipe works, together, to make the whole cake.

In the case of recipes, additional information comes for the persons who read and interpret the recipe in order to make the cake. According to the psychon theory, little biochemical animals (the enzymes) use the DNA as a recipe in order to give birth to other biochemical animals.

If a cook reads in a recipe that 3 kg salt must be used and 3 gram seem to be a reasonable quantity, then the cook will probably use 3 g and not 3 kg. Maybe he will not even notice that there is an error. In a similar way, enzymes are able to ignore and correct errors at all stages of protein synthesis.

In the case of recipes, the additional information introduced by the cook is independent from the recipes. However, in the case of purely materialistic biology, the additional information corresponding to the complex behaviour of enzymes is essentially explained by the same DNA. So apart from information contained in the biochemical machinery of the fertilized egg, this information of the DNA must be essentially enough to determine a human being. And think about the complexity alone of the nexus between around 10^8 photoreceptor cells and the brain.

The suggestion of drkitten in post #111 that the environment in the form of "mother's womb" or of temperature provides additional information seems not reasonable to me. Even if the sex of an alligator depends on the incubation temperature of the egg, the information needed for both the female and the male anatomy (and behaviour) must come from elsewhere and cannot somehow be created by temperature.

Originally Posted by Wowbagger

So, if the population does continue to grow, would that refute psychon theory?

See: this post.

Originally Posted by Wowbagger

If we were to conduct a study on births and deaths, how would we be able to examine the psychons of each person, to see if they are shared or not, to know this was an active mechanism in the world?

The relevant quote:

After death and before incarnation, souls exist only potentially and cannot be located in space. There is some evidence suggesting that the soul of a still living person can start a new incarnation. Then the development of the embryo and (in rare cases) baby is paralleled by a disappearing vitality of the person animated by the same soul, and it seems plausible that preventing a dying person forcefully from dying can lead to the death of a baby animated by the same soul.

I actually do not know how widespread such cases are. As probable examples I consider:

• Michelangelo (1475/03/06 – 1564/02/18) -> Galileo Galilei (1564/02/15 – 1642/01/08)
• Joseph Haydn (1732/03/31 – 1809/05/31) -> Felix Mendelssohn (1809/02/03 – 1847/11/04)
• Bernhard Förster (1843/03/31 - 1889/06/03) -> Adolf Hitler (1889/04/20 – 1945/04/30)
• Joseph Stalin (1878/12/18 – 1953/03/05) -> Vladimir Putin (1952/10/07)

Cheers, Wolfgang

[Wowbagger]

Originally Posted by wogoga

In the case of recipes, additional information comes for the persons who read and interpret the recipe in order to make the cake. According to the psychon theory, little biochemical animals (the enzymes) use the DNA as a recipe in order to give birth to other biochemical animals.

What do the concept of psychons add to our understanding of enzymes, that we would not gain from conventional biochemistry?
What new predictions can we test for, using the psychon theory?

Originally Posted by wogoga

The suggestion of drkitten in post #111 that the environment in the form of "mother's womb" or of temperature provides additional information seems not reasonable to me. Even if the sex of an alligator depends on the incubation temperature of the egg, the information needed for both the female and the male anatomy (and behaviour) must come from elsewhere and cannot somehow be created by temperature.

You missed the point: Information is not created by temperature, temperature, itself, is the added information. Temperature (and other environmental factors) together with genetics and physics seems to provide enough information for embryology to play out, so far.

If you insist on adding psychons to the picture, you will have to inform us about what new insights we can gain about embryology, that we could not have learned through those "conventional" factors: environment, physics, genes, etc.

If you are going to try to fight against the Theory of Evolution, you are going to have to enhance your understanding of it. Learn about the theory, from actual evolutionary biologists' point of view. "Know thy enemy!", Etc. Surely you must agree that it is hopeless to fight against something you only have a cursory understanding of?

Originally Posted by wogoga

See: this post.

All scientific theories undergo changes based on evidence, of course. But, those theories considered legitimate also play a role in changing other theories. While psychon theory seems to change quite frequently with evidence, it has not demonstrated any power to alter our understanding of any other theories, itself.

Furthermore, psychon theory seems to be altered in a manner that is analogous to post-hoc reasoning. A good theory makes predictions that can be tested: Sometimes the test passes and sometimes it fails. But, psychons do not seem to offer any sense of testability, so far. So, the ideas behind it are always in flux based on the results of real science going on around it.

Originally Posted by wogoga

I actually do not know how widespread such cases are. As probable examples I consider:

• Michelangelo (1475/03/06 – 1564/02/18) -> Galileo Galilei (1564/02/15 – 1642/01/08)
• Joseph Haydn (1732/03/31 – 1809/05/31) -> Felix Mendelssohn (1809/02/03 – 1847/11/04)
• Bernhard Förster (1843/03/31 - 1889/06/03) -> Adolf Hitler (1889/04/20 – 1945/04/30)
• Joseph Stalin (1878/12/18 – 1953/03/05) -> Vladimir Putin (1952/10/07)

What are the specific empirical mechanisms we can investigate, within these "probable examples"?

[wogoga]

Originally Posted by wogoga

On the other hand, there are related proteins of similar form and function, whose amino acid sequences have drifted apart substantially. There are even cases where the completely different amino acid sequences, corresponding to different reading frames of a given RNA sequence (frameshift), result in correct proteins or parts of proteins.

Originally Posted by Dr Adequate

I know that, too. This is just standard creationist fare. "It's complicated, so it can't have evolved".

The hypothesis that the DNA contains the very specific information concerning protein folding and enzymatic behaviour leads to this problem:

It is extremely improbable that different reading frames of the same DNA can lead to viable protein parts, because a frame shift leads to a more or less random amino acid sequence.

In a similar way, it is highly improbable to find a reasonable text which can be transformed into another reasonable text by a character-transformation such as for instance: a -> b, b -> c, c -> d, … z -> a.

In the following I assume that all 20 amino acids are equivalent, ignoring codon bias, stop-codon readthrough and similar. I assume also that a frame shift in a given sequence leads to a fully random sequence.

Let us call viable amino acids sequence a polypeptide which can be part of a protein with enzymatic activity. Assuming a chain of 100 members in the following, let us ask how many sequences are actually viable. Definitely, we can be sure that the answer must lie in between theses two extreme cases:

1. Only one sequence is viable; the probability that a random sequence is viable is (1/20)^100 = 10^-130.
2. All 20^100 = 10^130 sequences are viable; the probability that a random sequence is viable is 1.

In the first case we have an average viability-probability per amino acid of 1/20 = 5% and in the second case 1/1 = 100%.

Now let us assume that the viability-probability per amino acid is 25%. That means that at every position of the chain with 100 members, (because of mutual constraints only) 5 out of the 20 different amino acids can be used for a viable sequence to result. In this case, 5^100 = 10^70 viable sequences exist, and the probability that a random sequence is viable is (5/20)^100 = 10^-60.

The application of a frame shift to these 10^70 viable sequences leads to 10^70 random sequences (according to the simplifying hypotheses mentioned above). Because the probability of a random sequence being viable is 10^-60, we find around 10^10 viable sequences among these frameshifted sequences. Nevertheless, only one out of 10^60 viable sequences is able to produce another viable sequence by frameshift.

What happens however, if the viability-probability per amino acid is 20% instead of 25%, which means that at every position of the chain, 4 out of 20 amino acids are possible for a viable sequence to result. In this case, 4^100 = 10^60 viable sequences exist, and the probability that a random sequence is viable is (4/20)^100 = 10^-70.

So the application of a frame shift to the 10^60 viable sequences leads to 10^60 random sequences. Yet because the probability of a random sequence being viable is only 10^-70, it is highly improbable that one single of these frameshifted sequences is viable. Because actual viability-probability per amino acid seems to be lower than 20%, not even an almighty designer could create one DNA sequence, coding for two viable (100-amino-acid long) protein parts in two different reading frames, because such a sequence is excluded by probability theory.

I'm sure that every unprejudiced person being able to understand the above reasoning must admit: A biology, where the whole evolutionary progress is stored in DNA and to a lower extent in other material structures, is simply impossible from the logical point of view. Whether such a purely materialistic biology has the form of neo-Darwinism or the form of Intelligent Design does not matter.

Cheers, Wolfgang

[Dr Adequate]

Originally Posted by wogoga

The hypothesis that the DNA contains the very specific information concerning protein folding and enzymatic behaviour leads to this problem:

It is extremely improbable that different reading frames of the same DNA can lead to viable protein parts, because a frame shift leads to a more or less random amino acid sequence.

In a similar way, it is highly improbable to find a reasonable text which can be transformed into another reasonable text by a character-transformation such as for instance: a -> b, b -> c, c -> d, … z -> a.

In the following I assume that all 20 amino acids are equivalent, ignoring codon bias, stop-codon readthrough and similar. I assume also that a frame shift in a given sequence leads to a fully random sequence.

Let us call viable amino acids sequence a polypeptide which can be part of a protein with enzymatic activity. Assuming a chain of 100 members in the following, let us ask how many sequences are actually viable. Definitely, we can be sure that the answer must lie in between theses two extreme cases:

1. Only one sequence is viable; the probability that a random sequence is viable is (1/20)^100 = 10^-130.
2. All 20^100 = 10^130 sequences are viable; the probability that a random sequence is viable is 1.

In the first case we have an average viability-probability per amino acid of 1/20 = 5% and in the second case 1/1 = 100%.

Now let us assume that the viability-probability per amino acid is 25%. That means that at every position of the chain with 100 members, (because of mutual constraints only) 5 out of the 20 different amino acids can be used for a viable sequence to result. In this case, 5^100 = 10^70 viable sequences exist, and the probability that a random sequence is viable is (5/20)^100 = 10^-60.

The application of a frame shift to these 10^70 viable sequences leads to 10^70 random sequences (according to the simplifying hypotheses mentioned above). Because the probability of a random sequence being viable is 10^-60, we find around 10^10 viable sequences among these frameshifted sequences. Nevertheless, only one out of 10^60 viable sequences is able to produce another viable sequence by frameshift.

What happens however, if the viability-probability per amino acid is 20% instead of 25%, which means that at every position of the chain, 4 out of 20 amino acids are possible for a viable sequence to result. In this case, 4^100 = 10^60 viable sequences exist, and the probability that a random sequence is viable is (4/20)^100 = 10^-70.

So the application of a frame shift to the 10^60 viable sequences leads to 10^60 random sequences. Yet because the probability of a random sequence being viable is only 10^-70, it is highly improbable that one single of these frameshifted sequences is viable. Because actual viability-probability per amino acid seems to be lower than 20%, not even an almighty designer could create one DNA sequence, coding for two viable (100-amino-acid long) protein parts in two different reading frames, because such a sequence is excluded by probability theory.

I'm sure that every unprejudiced person being able to understand the above reasoning must admit: A biology, where the whole evolutionary progress is stored in DNA and to a lower extent in other material structures, is simply impossible from the logical point of view. Whether such a purely materialistic biology has the form of neo-Darwinism or the form of Intelligent Design does not matter.

Cheers, Wolfgang

Nice made-up numbers, undefined terms, and unsupported asserions. Good use of the complete non sequitur. And the bit at the end when you declare yourself "sure" that every unprejudiced person will agree with you? It's a masterpiece of self-deception.

[bruto]

Repeating Wowbagger's question a different way: Can psychon theory predict a maximum human population for the earth now? If that maximum population is exceeded in the future, will you consider the theory falsified, or will you, as seems habitual here, find a way to redefine failure as success?

In other words, what possible event or finding would convince you that your theory is wrong? If there is no such event, then we're talking about something other than a scientific theory, aren't we?

[rocketdodger]

Originally Posted by wogoga

I'm sure that every unprejudiced person being able to understand the above reasoning must admit: A biology, where the whole evolutionary progress is stored in DNA and to a lower extent in other material structures, is simply impossible from the logical point of view. Whether such a purely materialistic biology has the form of neo-Darwinism or the form of Intelligent Design does not matter.

You are being purposefully ignorant, and it is getting old. Numerous people here have told you, explicitly, that nobody who knows what they are talking about has made the claim that the whole evolutionary progress is stored anywhere.

I find it remarkable that someone who claims to know as much as you about biology could be so uneducated in the realm of molecular biology that they think DNA actually stores the information needed to grow and run the human body -- modern science has known, for some time, that it simply helps derive that information when needed.

Does a mass store the information that it should drop when affected by gravity? Does an airfoil store the information that it should lift when propelled through the air? Does wood store the information that it should burn when lit? Of course not. Similarly, DNA does not "store" the information of how any protein should work, or even how proteins should interact with each other -- the laws of nature take care of that automatically once the protein has been assembled.

You are implying that, for example, water molecules "store" the entire structure of every possible snowflake they might come together to form -- a clearly absurd idea.

[Frozenwolf150]

Wait, is this the same douchebag who made that thread a while back about how there aren't enough reincarnated souls to go around, and that's what's causing infertility and various diseases?

Oh yeah, it is.

Well it's good to know that all my health problems can be explained by something as trivial as the lack of a soul. Now I really wish I hadn't sold mine on eBay.

[Reality Check]

Originally Posted by wogoga

The hypothesis that the DNA contains the very specific information concerning protein folding and enzymatic behaviour leads to this problem:

It is extremely improbable that different reading frames of the same DNA can lead to viable protein parts, because a frame shift leads to a more or less random amino acid sequence.

In a similar way, it is highly improbable to find a reasonable text which can be transformed into another reasonable text by a character-transformation such as for instance: a -> b, b -> c, c -> d, … z -> a.

In the following I assume that all 20 amino acids are equivalent, ignoring codon bias, stop-codon readthrough and similar. I assume also that a frame shift in a given sequence leads to a fully random sequence.


Let us call viable amino acids sequence a polypeptide which can be part of a protein with enzymatic activity. Assuming a chain of 100 members in the following, let us ask how many sequences are actually viable. Definitely, we can be sure that the answer must lie in between theses two extreme cases:

1. Only one sequence is viable; the probability that a random sequence is viable is (1/20)^100 = 10^-130.
2. All 20^100 = 10^130 sequences are viable; the probability that a random sequence is viable is 1.

In the first case we have an average viability-probability per amino acid of 1/20 = 5% and in the second case 1/1 = 100%.

Now let us assume that the viability-probability per amino acid is 25%. That means that at every position of the chain with 100 members, (because of mutual constraints only) 5 out of the 20 different amino acids can be used for a viable sequence to result. In this case, 5^100 = 10^70 viable sequences exist, and the probability that a random sequence is viable is (5/20)^100 = 10^-60.

The application of a frame shift to these 10^70 viable sequences leads to 10^70 random sequences (according to the simplifying hypotheses mentioned above). Because the probability of a random sequence being viable is 10^-60, we find around 10^10 viable sequences among these frameshifted sequences. Nevertheless, only one out of 10^60 viable sequences is able to produce another viable sequence by frameshift.

What happens however, if the viability-probability per amino acid is 20% instead of 25%, which means that at every position of the chain, 4 out of 20 amino acids are possible for a viable sequence to result. In this case, 4^100 = 10^60 viable sequences exist, and the probability that a random sequence is viable is (4/20)^100 = 10^-70.

So the application of a frame shift to the 10^60 viable sequences leads to 10^60 random sequences. Yet because the probability of a random sequence being viable is only 10^-70, it is highly improbable that one single of these frameshifted sequences is viable. Because actual viability-probability per amino acid seems to be lower than 20%, not even an almighty designer could create one DNA sequence, coding for two viable (100-amino-acid long) protein parts in two different reading frames, because such a sequence is excluded by probability theory.

I'm sure that every unprejudiced person being able to understand the above reasoning must admit: A biology, where the whole evolutionary progress is stored in DNA and to a lower extent in other material structures, is simply impossible from the logical point of view. Whether such a purely materialistic biology has the form of neo-Darwinism or the form of Intelligent Design does not matter.

Cheers, Wolfgang

I have to add my 2 cents worth and agree with the previous posters:
Wolfgang. Please please please learn some basic biology before you make yourself more ridiculous than you already seem.

[wogoga]

Originally Posted by Dr Adequate

Nice made-up numbers, undefined terms, and unsupported assertions. Good use of the complete non sequitur. And the bit at the end when you declare yourself "sure" that every unprejudiced person will agree with you? It's a masterpiece of self-deception.

I may sound arrogant, but I'm sure that no-one on earth knows himself better than I do. Therefore I'm also convinced that there aren't many persons which are as sensitive to self-deception as I am.

Originally Posted by Reality Check

I have to add my 2 cents worth and agree with the previous posters:
Wolfgang. Please please please learn some basic biology before you make yourself more ridiculous than you already seem.

Could you explain what you do not understand in my reasoning? And if you understand the reasoning, could you explain why you consider it ridiculous?

Cheers, Wolfgang

Big-bang neo-Darwinism is rather the contrary of real evolution in the sense of a continuous increase in complexity of nature. Its central principle is not continuous progress but continuous decay. Therefore it is essentially a theory of a one-time creation from Intelligent Design: The universe was created in a state of the highest order (lowest entropy) and with laws so intelligent that even humans can result from random events of blind downhill processes (transforming less probable configurations into more probable configuration, and decreasing order of the universe as a whole).

[Gravy]

Originally Posted by wogoga

I may sound arrogant, but I'm sure that no-one on earth knows himself better than I do. Therefore I'm also convinced that there aren't many persons which are as sensitive to self-deception as I am.

Unfortunately, this is the self-deceptive's credo.

[rocketdodger]

Originally Posted by wogoga

Could you explain what you do not understand in my reasoning? And if you understand the reasoning, could you explain why you consider it ridiculous?

Sure.

Originally Posted by wogoga

It is extremely improbable that different reading frames of the same DNA can lead to viable protein parts, because a frame shift leads to a more or less random amino acid sequence.

An intelligent person would expect certain sequences to have a much higher probability of producing something meaningful after a shift than other sequences. Furthermore, an intelligent person would expect to see the mechanisms of evolution encouraging mutations that shift those "lucky" sequences to be carried much more frequently than those that don't. The arbitrary numbers you came up with don't seem to account for any of this.

This is a typical creationist tactic -- use some (what they consider) arbitrary "fancy mathematics" to distract the less educated into forgetting that nature is anything but arbitrary. Your argument here is nothing but a more complicated version of the dishonest "the probability that we suddenly popped into being from a random assortment of atoms is extremely low, so evolution is therefore wrong" argument.

Originally Posted by wogoga

I'm sure that every unprejudiced person being able to understand the above reasoning must admit: A biology, where the whole evolutionary progress is stored in DNA and to a lower extent in other material structures, is simply impossible from the logical point of view. Whether such a purely materialistic biology has the form of neo-Darwinism or the form of Intelligent Design does not matter.

Yes, it does seem impossible. It is a good thing, then, that neither neo-Darwinism nor Intelligent Design suggests anything remotely similar.

This is another of the tired and sad tactics creationists must resort to (although whether it be out of malice or simple ignorance I cannot tell) -- the strawman. We have explained to you over and over why this is a strawman, heck I did in my last post (which you conveniently ignored, I see), yet you continue to vomit it all over the forum. Are you malicious, or just ignorant?

[kjkent1]

Originally Posted by wogoga

Could you explain what you do not understand in my reasoning? And if you understand the reasoning, could you explain why you consider it ridiculous?

This is worth some comment.

Creationists, in general, attempt to disprove scientific hypotheses by negation, i.e., such and such cannot be true because the probability of its occurrence is infinitesimally small.

This sort of reasoning is unscientific, because no matter how small the probability of some event may be in advance of its happening, if the event actually occurs, then its probability is instantly raised to Unity (100%).

At any given instant the arrangement of atoms in the universe is incredibly improbable -- were it to be calculated in advance. But, "it is what it is," and so any future probability calculation must be tempered by the reality of what actually exists.

Life is here -- so is homo sapiens. We are sentient beings. So, the question of our improbability is no longer at issue. The only question is "how did we come to be?"

The fossil and genetic record of past and present life shows very clearly that we are here due to the instant effect of random mutation on germ cell DNA, as tempered by environmental pressures (natural selection). This is simply not open to reasonable dispute.

What "is" open to dispute is whether or not those mutations and environmental pressures are the result of mere physical processes, or, some metaphysical catalyst.

If the former, then the scientific method should be capable of completely measuring the activities (except for those activities which are of quantum mechanical character).

If the latter, then NO AMOUNT OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION WILL SUFFICE, because science cannot conclude on a hypothesis that cannot be measured -- and that is the very definition of what is metaphysical.

The set of all things metaphysical and the set of all things physical has no intersection. It cannot, because as soon as something previously believed to be metaphysical is measurable via the scientific method, that something ceases to be metaphysical.

I have little doubt that my monologue here will do anything to stop the constant argument over what randomness is or is not capable. Perhaps, it is simply that randomness "is" God acting within the universe [n.b., lawyers use the term "Act of God" to describe those things over which man has no control, and which cannot be predicted in advance]).

Regardless, the short answer to the question of why your reasoning is "unreasonable," is because you are attempting to apply scientific investigation to prove that which cannot be scientifically proved.

God is simply not amenable to investigation by mere mortals.

[Reality Check]

Originally Posted by wogoga

Could you explain what you do not understand in my reasoning? And if you understand the reasoning, could you explain why you consider it ridiculous?

Cheers, Wolfgang

Your reasoning is the same nonsense that everyone on this forum has seen spouted from creationists with no brains (I hope that you are not one of those!). I suggest that you have a look at talk origins for the rebuttal to this.

[Wowbagger]

Originally Posted by wogoga

I may sound arrogant, but I'm sure that no-one on earth knows himself better than I do. Therefore I'm also convinced that there aren't many persons which are as sensitive to self-deception as I am.

That's the problem with self-deception: It tends to be self-deceptive!

The only way to know you are not decieving yourself, is for others to put your ideas to the test.

One of the key reasons science exists, in the first place, is because it is impossible for anyone to be sensitive to their own self-deception.

[wogoga]

Originally Posted by wogoga

I'm sure that every unprejudiced person being able to understand the above reasoning must admit: A biology, where the whole evolutionary progress is stored in DNA and to a lower extent in other material structures, is simply impossible from the logical point of view. Whether such a purely materialistic biology has the form of neo-Darwinism or the form of Intelligent Design does not matter.

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

...

Numerous people here have told you, explicitly, that nobody who knows what they are talking about has made the claim that the whole evolutionary progress is stored anywhere.

You cannot make disappear a logical problem by simply ignoring it. It is impossible to build a tool, a house, a car or something else without corresponding information. The advent of automated machines and computers has shown that even the construction of simple tools needs quite some information.

I find it remarkable that someone who claims to know as much as you about biology could be so uneducated in the realm of molecular biology that they think DNA actually stores the information needed to grow and run the human body -- modern science has known, for some time, that it simply helps derive that information when needed.

Compare the bone structure of a human with the bone structure of a chimpanzee. Every single bone has several degrees of freedom. And in order to determine a degree of freedom, information is needed. That is simple logic (see also). Or take the pseudo-thumb of the two panda species, which has emerged during phylogenetic evolution in addition to the five fingers. The information that such a pseudo-thumb appears during ontogenetic development must come from somewhere. Or do you suggest that a panda embryo can scan the body of its mother and use this as information?

Does a mass store the information that it should drop when affected by gravity? Does an airfoil store the information that it should lift when propelled through the air? Does wood store the information that it should burn when lit? Of course not. Similarly, DNA does not "store" the information of how any protein should work, or even how proteins should interact with each other -- the laws of nature take care of that automatically once the protein has been assembled.

Where are the degrees of freedom in your examples? Do you suggest that the fact that a HIV protease cleaves viral polyproteins at twelve different sites is similar to the free fall of a stone or to the burning of wood?

"The HIV-1 protease is a small, 99-amino-acid aspartic enzyme that mediates the cleavage of Gag, Gag-Pol, and Nef precursor polyproteins. These reactions occur late in the viral life cycle, during virion assembly and maturation at the cell surface. The process is highly specific, temporally regulated, and essential for the production of infectious viral particles. … In total, 12 proteolytic reactions are required to generate a mature infectious virion. Each reaction occurs at a unique cleavage site that differs in amino acid composition." (Source)

A macromolecule like the HIV protease could also not work at all or do uncountable other things instead of cutting amino acid chains. And apart from cleaving viral amino acid chains in a "highly specific, temporally regulated" way, it could cut cellular amino acid chains. And even if something similar to a gravitational force attracts the HIV protease to HIV amino acid chains, where does the information concerning the locations of the twelve cleavage sites (with each a different amino acid composition) come from?

Because the 99 amino acids of the HIV protease are coded by 297 base pairs of DNA or RNA, and one base pair represents 0.25 byte, a genetic information in the order of 75 byte can be attributed to the HIV protease. Sorry again, but from the point of view of pure reason, the assumption that this information could somehow be enough to determine the "highly specific, temporally regulated" behaviour of the HIV protease is more than grotesque!

The whole HIV-RNA is 9749 nucleotides long and codes for a polypeptide of around 3250 amino acids (ignoring overlapping and not used regions). So in principle there may be in the order of 3250^12 = 10^42 different (including chronology) ways to apply twelve cleavages to HIV polypeptides. (It is obvious that more than one of these ways is viable.)

Think about the information needed for and by a robot capable of recognizing and cutting the twelve sites of macroscopic models of HIV polyproteins. And don't forget: the information content of the HIV protease is only in the order 75 byte.

Maybe the following animations can help to recognize that enzymes are in fact animated beings with inborn instinctive behaviour (acquired during biological evolution and representing information): HIV Replication 3D Animation and HIV Lifecycle.

Cheers, Wolfgang

[wollery]

[Richard Masters]

To the OP. Look up gastrulation, cell differentiation and cell migration.

Regarding your assertion that DNA can't contain the information needed to create a human being, and your flawed conclusions about the compression of information, look up procedural generation.

A small team of enthusiasts created a first person shooter game in 97,280 bytes of information (.kkrieger). These 97K encode information that would require 200-300MB by conventional methods.

That's a factor of over 3000.

However, in the real world there is no need for a physics engine (the world is a physics engine). As was noted before, a lot of the information needed to constrain or guide biological processes doesn't need to be contained in the DNA.

There are also computer genetic algorithms which can produce coherent and complex structures or information over time.

If you combine both methods (evolution and procedural generation,) in either context, you can produce astounding results.

Thus, I disagree with your assertion that random mutations cannot explain the evolution of humans.

[Richard Masters]

Would you be so kind as to take this down http://members.lol.li/twostone/E/psychon.html ?

At least take down the section called: "A final devastating argument against reductionism"

Your devastating argument is completely destroyed by a video game. (See previous post.)

[Dr Adequate]

Originally Posted by wogoga

Because the 99 amino acids of the HIV protease are coded by 297 base pairs of DNA or RNA, and one base pair represents 0.25 byte, a genetic information in the order of 75 byte can be attributed to the HIV protease. Sorry again, but from the point of view of pure reason, the assumption that this information could somehow be enough to determine the "highly specific, temporally regulated" behaviour of the HIV protease is more than grotesque!

Now, in today's lesson, we're going to learn the difference between "pure reason" and unsubstantiated assertion.

That is an unsubstantated assertion.

To substantiate it, you'd have to find some aspect of the function of the protease which is not the resullt of its chemistry. When you've done that, then you can start fantasizing about this function being undertaken by psychons or magic gene fairies or divine intervention.

I predict that you will be unable to identify any such function, just as you were unable to identify a polypeptide without a gene, or a reaction without an enzyme or functional RNA.

This is because you're colossally, monumentally wrong.

[rocketdodger]

Originally Posted by wogoga

You cannot make disappear a logical problem by simply ignoring it. It is impossible to build a tool, a house, a car or something else without corresponding information. The advent of automated machines and computers has shown that even the construction of simple tools needs quite some information.

Clearly. It has also shown that by relying on construction time derivation of parameters, using the axioms of mathematics (hint: they apply to biology as well), the apparent complexity of the processes used in construction can be much lower than the construct. I can write a piece of code, compiling into only a few thousand bytes of data, that can construct a billion sided polygon.

Originally Posted by wogoga

Compare the bone structure of a human with the bone structure of a chimpanzee. Every single bone has several degrees of freedom. And in order to determine a degree of freedom, information is needed. That is simple logic (see also). Or take the pseudo-thumb of the two panda species, which has emerged during phylogenetic evolution in addition to the five fingers. The information that such a pseudo-thumb appears during ontogenetic development must come from somewhere. Or do you suggest that a panda embryo can scan the body of its mother and use this as information?

Yes, it is simple logic, and everyone here agrees. But it doesn't advance your argument any. Your monumental failure in this thread has been to grossly overestimate the "degrees of freedom" that are actually needed for a biological structure to take on or change function. As Dr Adequate has been saying, find any example of function that is not entirely the result of the laws of chemistry, and you will be right.

Originally Posted by wogoga

Where are the degrees of freedom in your examples? Do you suggest that the fact that a HIV protease cleaves viral polyproteins at twelve different sites is similar to the free fall of a stone or to the burning of wood?

Uh, yes, because both are entirely the result of the laws of chemistry and nothing more? Or are you suggesting that some unseen force is controlling the protease and telling it which sites to cleave at? You could test that hypothesis, you know -- remove any molecule from the protease and see if it behaves exactly the same. Do you think it will?

Originally Posted by wogoga

Think about the information needed for and by a robot capable of recognizing and cutting the twelve sites of macroscopic models of HIV polyproteins. And don't forget: the information content of the HIV protease is only in the order 75 byte.

Think about the information needed for and by a robot capable of reconstructing every snowflake shape found on Earth. And don't forget: the information content of the water molecule is in the order of 0 bytes.

Originally Posted by wogoga

Maybe the following animations can help to recognize that enzymes are in fact animated beings with inborn instinctive behaviour (acquired during biological evolution and representing information): HIV Replication 3D Animation and HIV Lifecycle.

Maybe the following book can help you understand why you are completely wrong about what information actually is:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/ima...5382082&sr=8-1

[wogoga]

Originally Posted by wogoga

Think about the information needed for and by a robot capable of recognizing and cutting the twelve sites of macroscopic models of HIV polyproteins. And don't forget: the information content of the HIV protease is only in the order 75 byte.

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

Think about the information needed for and by a robot capable of reconstructing every snowflake shape found on Earth. And don't forget: the information content of the water molecule is in the order of 0 bytes.

Water molecules form snowflakes in a similar way as viral enzymes form viral particles. Thus a correct analogy would be rather:

Think about the information needed for and by a robot capable of taking, together with a huge number of identical robots, such symmetric configurations characteristic of snowflakes.

However, the formation of snow crystals is at least in some respects still a mystery. A quote from The physics of snow crystals, 2005:

"Although it appears to be a relatively simple monomolecular physical system, the growth of snow crystals exhibit’s a surprisingly rich behaviour as a function of temperature, supersaturation and other external parameters. As we will see below, a great deal of this behaviour remains unexplained, even at a qualitative level."

This paper is referenced on the excellent site on snowflakes with many wonderful pictures.

I would say that the existence of snowflakes is evidence not only for a general tendency of nature toward order and harmony, but also for panpsychism. Because matter is taken for granted in panpsychism, pandualism is actually a better name for a world view in which a psychic aspect of nature is omnipresent, starting with elementary particles.

If we take into account that a typical snow crystal may consist of around 10^18 water molecules, then we should not too hastily exclude a pandualist explanation sketched by these two quotes from psychon theory:

"The astonishing ability of carbon atoms to build hollow balls (fullerenes), the ability of water molecules to build elaborate crystals, or the catalytic power of atoms and simple molecules, all this can be (better) explained if we attribute to the atoms and molecules primitive perception of their surroundings and purposeful behaviour. If enzymes are conscious beings, it seems obvious that also simple molecules and atoms can be conscious beings."

"It seems obvious that the same molecules can be animated by different psychon types. The environment continuity maintains order. For psychons which animate matter of such a low complexity level there should be no difference between inactivity and death. (In the case of humans the connection between soul and body with its psychons is so complex, that it can be built up only during ontogenesis)."

Environment continuity could be the key to "understanding the dramatic variations seen in snow crystal morphology as a function of temperature, a mystery that has remained largely unsolved since its discovery 75 years ago."

In order to get a better imagination of what happens during snow crystal formation, let us increase all spatial proportions by a factor of 10^9. Then, a water molecule has a 'diameter' of around 30 cm (around 30 water molecules per cubic meter), and the diameter of a typical snowflake (around 1 or 2 mm in reality) is as large as 1000 or 2000 km. How could it be possible that local, more or less random motions of objects with a size of a football create such incredibly ordered configurations extending over huge distances? See also.

Cheers, Wolfgang

[Mashuna]

Originally Posted by wogoga

It seems obvious that also simple molecules and atoms can be conscious beings.

I just wanted to highlight this particular sentence.

[rocketdodger]

Originally Posted by Mashuna

I just wanted to highlight this particular sentence.

Aye. I enjoy posting a counter argument that is so strong creationsists (and other woos) need to finally expose just how crazy they are in order to continue the discussion.

In this case, wogoga has admitted that he/she doesn't believe crystal structure can be derived using fundamental mathematics, and instead is the result of psychons.

I guess we are at an impasse, then? If he/she refuses to acknowledge known mathematics, then we can't argue any further, can we?

[rocketdodger]

Do you claim psychons are behind this as well, wogoga?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirograph

[sackett]

Delightful avatar, Dr. A. It looks very like a Pewabic tile.

[Richard Masters]

I'm still waiting for a response. Should I expect one?

[Mashuna]

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

Aye. I enjoy posting a counter argument that is so strong creationsists (and other woos) need to finally expose just how crazy they are in order to continue the discussion.

Well done. You have now won this thread. Proceed directly to the next challenge.

[Ron_Tomkins]

In short, I just have one question for those who make the claim: If random mutations cannot explain evolution, what can?

[wollery]

Originally Posted by Richard Masters

I'm still waiting for a response. Should I expect one?

That depends, do you want it to make sense?

[Reality Check]

Originally Posted by wogoga

Water molecules form snowflakes in a similar way as viral enzymes form viral particles. Thus a correct analogy would be rather:

Think about the information needed for and by a robot capable of taking, together with a huge number of identical robots, such symmetric configurations characteristic of snowflakes.

However, the formation of snow crystals is at least in some respects still a mystery. A quote from The physics of snow crystals, 2005:

"Although it appears to be a relatively simple monomolecular physical system, the growth of snow crystals exhibit’s a surprisingly rich behaviour as a function of temperature, supersaturation and other external parameters. As we will see below, a great deal of this behaviour remains unexplained, even at a qualitative level."

This paper is referenced on the excellent site on snowflakes with many wonderful pictures.

I would say that the existence of snowflakes is evidence not only for a general tendency of nature toward order and harmony, but also for panpsychism. Because matter is taken for granted in panpsychism, pandualism is actually a better name for a world view in which a psychic aspect of nature is omnipresent, starting with elementary particles.

..snip of total woo...

In order to get a better imagination of what happens during snow crystal formation, let us increase all spatial proportions by a factor of 10^9. Then, a water molecule has a 'diameter' of around 30 cm (around 30 water molecules per cubic meter), and the diameter of a typical snowflake (around 1 or 2 mm in reality) is as large as 1000 or 2000 km. How could it be possible that local, more or less random motions of objects with a size of a football create such incredibly ordered configurations extending over huge distances? See also.

Cheers, Wolfgang

Wolfgang: What a lot of ... woo. Have you ever heard of electromagnetic forces? How about hydrogen bonding? Crystallization?

There are some details that we do not know about snowflake formation. But the formation of crystals of ice with six-fold symmetry is not one of them. Lets quote the entire paragraph from the paper:

Quote:

In many ways, the formation of ice crystals from the vapour phase is an excellent case study of crystal growth dynamics and pattern formation during solidification. Although it appears to be a relatively simple monomolecular physical system, the growth of snow crystals exhibits a surprisingly rich behaviour as a function of temperature, supersaturation and other external parameters. As we will see below, a great deal of this behaviour remains unexplained, even at a qualitative level. Thus there is much to be learned, and ample potential that a better understanding of ice will contribute to our overall understanding of crystal growth and solidification. Taking the next step beyond the monomolecular system, ice crystal growth from water vapour is known to be quite sensitive to chemical influences at the growing surface, so again ice is an excellent case study for the more general, and exceptionally diverse, problem of chemically mediated crystal growth.

[wogoga]

Originally Posted by Richard Masters

Look up gastrulation, cell differentiation and cell migration.

We agree on facts, and even on this: All happenings in living beings are by definition biochemical. However, you simply continue to ignore the fact that cells cannot migrate to specific destinations without specific information. Or do you claim that during ontogenetic development, biochemical manifestations of algorithms appear?

The hallmark of true science has always been dealing with concrete qualitative and quantitative relations in space and time in due consideration of logical consistency. Simply claiming that an algorithm can create the necessary amount of information does not help, if absolutely nothing suggests that something only partially similar to an algorithm is executed during ontogenesis.

And even more important: Information created by an algorithm lacks degrees of freedom at the level of the created information. Yet during biological evolution, every part of an organism (e.g. a not yet existing pseudo-thumb of the panda-predecessors) can change as a function of necessity or advantage.

In principle it is possible to demonstrate the continuous transition from e.g. blue whales to humans by a series of pictures of real animals/humans, all having lived or still living on earth.

In the case of algorithm-created information however, such a continuous transition is not possible. Take e.g. (the information corresponding to) the decimal digits created by an algorithm calculating the square root of numbers. In the case of 2 we get 141421356... and in the case of 3 we get 173205080..., both representing somehow an infinite amount of information. Nevertheless, it is impossible to create by such a square-root algorithm sequences intermediate between these two sequences.

Also in the case of fractals, there is no continuous transition between e.g. the Mandelbrot set and the Julia set.

Originally Posted by Richard Masters

At least take down the section called: "A final devastating argument against reductionism". Your devastating argument is completely destroyed by a video game. (See previous post.)

Are you serious? Do you suggest that the complexity of a computer game of 97.28 kilobyte can be compared with the complexity of living systems?

My argument:

"The information of the genetic code of HIV is less than 2.5 kilobyte. Computer science has shown how little this is. This genetic information can never be enough information for a virus to survive.

The part of the human genetic code which is used ( about 1 to 10%) can be compressed (at least) to about 10 or 100 megabyte. In many cases this information is even used in such an inefficient way that the information which is used to produce a protein is many times higher than the information which is stored in the final amino acid sequence of the protein."

The actual content of most counterarguments presented in this discussion by orthodox skeptics is nothing more than circular reasoning (petitio principii), a logical fallacy already well-known to Aristotle. In our case the fallacy looks like this:

All that happens in living beings is by definition biochemical, and biochemistry is by definition explainable by (purely materialist) chemical and physical laws. Thus all facts concerning ontogeny or phylogeny must agree with pure materialism and every argument suggesting otherwise is necessarily wrong.

A good example of this fallacy has been put forward in post #134:

"Creationists, in general, attempt to disprove scientific hypotheses by negation, i.e., such and such cannot be true because the probability of its occurrence is infinitesimally small.

This sort of reasoning is unscientific, because no matter how small the probability of some event may be in advance of its happening, if the event actually occurs, then its probability is instantly raised to Unity (100%)."

Without circular reasoning, from the low probabilities of a given explanation one can only conclude that at least one of the "scientific hypotheses" is extremely unlikely (and therefore also the explanation as whole) .

In post #125 I presented a simple logical argument showing that it is extremely improbable that two different reading frames of one DNA sequence can lead to functional protein parts.

From the fact that such cases of frameshift actually exist, rocketdodger felt entitled to claim:

"An intelligent person would expect certain sequences to have a much higher probability of producing something meaningful after a shift than other sequences."

This is similar to:

An intelligent person would expect certain sentences to have a much higher probability of producing something meaningful after the character-transformation a -> b, b -> c, c -> d, … z -> a than other sentences.

From the fact that such frameshift cases have emerged during evolution, one cannot logically conclude that the currently prevailing theory of evolution is consistent with such frameshift cases. This conclusion is either the consequence of a confusion between the fact of evolution and the prevailing theory of evolution or again a petitio principii.

The pandualist explanation of such frameshift cases is simple:

Psychons, animating single amino acids (and having tendency to form chains in order to better survive), had already existed in huge numbers, when something similar to translation began to spread. Using existing RNA chains as templates, (precursors of) ribosomes chained amino acids, resulting in apriori random amino acid chains. The amino acids of such chains collaborated e.g. in defending themselves from getting destroyed. Their coordinated behaviour became more and more specific. By specialisation emerged psychons able to dominate such amino acid chains. If a widespread RNA chain was translated according to two different reading frames, two completely different, arbitrary amino acid chains emerged, both however with the potential of further evolution (independently from mutations, which are more problematic in such cases because one mutation affects two proteins in a completely different way).

But I know: Because of our past biological evolution, it is very difficult for us to change fundamental parts of our world views. So most of us simply die with the old beliefs and learn the more adequate new ones in a new life.

Cheers, Wolfgang

[Reality Check]

Wolfgang: Do you know why the genetic code of a virus is so small?
It is because it does not have the overhead of a mechanism to reproduce itself. Instead it takes over the reproductive mechanism of its host.

PS. I would be interested in the source for your claim of less than 2.5 kilobyes of information in the HIV genetic code. Is this the Shannon information? What paper did you get this from?

[Richard Masters]

Originally Posted by wogoga

We agree on facts, and even on this: All happenings in living beings are by definition biochemical. However, you simply continue to ignore the fact that cells cannot migrate to specific destinations without specific information. Or do you claim that during ontogenetic development, biochemical manifestations of algorithms appear?

I'm not ignoring that cells require information to migrate to their final destination. Do biochemical manifestations of algorithms appear? Clearly so... that's how proteins are formed.

Quote:

The hallmark of true science has always been dealing with concrete qualitative and quantitative relations in space and time in due consideration of logical consistency. Simply claiming that an algorithm can create the necessary amount of information does not help

Sure it does. You claimed random mutations cannot account for the evolution of humans because DNA doesn't contain enough information. I showed that information can be simplified and compressed by a factor of at least 3000 by computer enthusiasts. This counterexample disproves your hypothesis.

So, regardless whether random mutation does or doesn't explain the evolution of humans, based on what we know about information and complexity, it certainly can.

Quote:

And even more important: Information created by an algorithm lacks degrees of freedom at the level of the created information.

Who told you that? DNA encodes proteins that interact with each other at multiple levels, at different times, in different ways. What specifically, do you propose inhibits freedom of expression?

Quote:

In principle it is possible to demonstrate the continuous transition from e.g. blue whales to humans by a series of pictures of real animals/humans, all having lived or still living on earth.

In the case of algorithm-created information however, such a continuous transition is not possible.

Sure it is. Compare vector to raster graphics. I think you are confusing phenotype and genotype, as well as matters regarding scale. Just because something looks smooth to you doesn't mean the mapping isn't discrete.

Quote:

Take e.g. (the information corresponding to) the decimal digits created by an algorithm calculating the square root of numbers. In the case of 2 we get 141421356... and in the case of 3 we get 173205080..., both representing somehow an infinite amount of information. Nevertheless, it is impossible to create by such a square-root algorithm sequences intermediate between these two sequences.

It's not impossible at all. There are many ways. You can take the square root of 2.5; You can find the geometric mean: sqr(sqr(2) * sqr(3)) = 1.56508458...

Quote:

Also in the case of fractals, there is no continuous transition between e.g. the Mandelbrot set and the Julia set.

Why does this matter? Whether or not there is a continuous transition between two fractal sets is irrelevant to whether complexity can be compressed or expressed by algorithms. Again, you need to understand the difference between phenotype and genotype.

Quote:

Are you serious? Do you suggest that the complexity of a computer game of 97.28 kilobyte can be compared with the complexity of living systems?

If you really believe thas was my point, then you missed it. I was explaining to you how information can be compressed. Whether or not you appeal to emotion because living beings are "sacred" is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if it is a video game or an efficiently compressed encyclopedia galactica. What matters is that it is a counterexample to your argument via the glass analogy. You need a new argument.

Quote:

"The information of the genetic code of HIV is less than 2.5 kilobyte. Computer science has shown how little this is. This genetic information can never be enough information for a virus to survive.

Why is this not enough information for a virus to survive? Can you elaborate?

Quote:

The part of the human genetic code which is used ( about 1 to 10%) can be compressed (at least) to about 10 or 100 megabyte. In many cases this information is even used in such an inefficient way that the information which is used to produce a protein is many times higher than the information which is stored in the final amino acid sequence of the protein."

Are you saying DNA can code for all proteins? If so then you are contradicting yourself.

Quote:

The actual content of most counterarguments presented in this discussion by orthodox skeptics is nothing more than circular reasoning (petitio principii), a logical fallacy already well-known to Aristotle. In our case the fallacy looks like this:

All that happens in living beings is by definition biochemical, and biochemistry is by definition explainable by (purely materialist) chemical and physical laws. Thus all facts concerning ontogeny or phylogeny must agree with pure materialism and every argument suggesting otherwise is necessarily wrong.

Actually, I don't need to make that argument. All I had to do was find a counterexample to your fabrication that DNA cannot contain the required information to encode a human being. The argument you presented above is irrelevant to anything I've said to you.

Quote:

In post #125 I presented a simple logical argument showing that it is extremely improbable that two different reading frames of one DNA sequence can lead to functional protein parts.

I read it. But evolutionary algorithms do this all the time in the lab. It's one of the easiest ways to get computers to solve complex problems. Not only is it not improbable, but it is practical in real settings. Either way, it's irrelevant to your glass of water analogy.

Quote:

From the fact that such frameshift cases have emerged during evolution, one cannot logically conclude that the currently prevailing theory of evolution is consistent with such frameshift cases. This conclusion is either the consequence of a confusion between the fact of evolution and the prevailing theory of evolution or again a petitio principii.

You are forgetting time. Evolutionary algorithms are time-intensive and do not usually produce good results the first few generations. If you want to exclude time, then you are arguing against a straw man, and not against evolution. Suit yourself.

Quote:

Psychons, animating single amino acids (and having tendency to form chains in order to better survive), had already existed in huge numbers, when something similar to translation began to spread. Using existing RNA chains as templates, (precursors of) ribosomes chained amino acids, resulting in apriori random amino acid chains. The amino acids of such chains collaborated e.g. in defending themselves from getting destroyed. Their coordinated behaviour became more and more specific. By specialisation emerged psychons able to dominate such amino acid chains. If a widespread RNA chain was translated according to two different reading frames, two completely different, arbitrary amino acid chains emerged, both however with the potential of further evolution (independently from mutations, which are more problematic in such cases because one mutation affects two proteins in a completely different way).

It's a nice theory, but it is not needed to account for evolution.

Quote:

But I know: Because of our past biological evolution, it is very difficult for us to change fundamental parts of our world views. So most of us simply die with the old beliefs and learn the more adequate new ones in a new life.

Cheers, Wolfgang

Even if your theory is correct, your justifications and rationale are wrong. I disbelieve your theory because you got your information theory wrong, not because I'm not willing to learn new things.

[Dancing David]

Originally Posted by wogoga

We agree on facts, and even on this: All happenings in living beings are by definition biochemical. However, you simply continue to ignore the fact that cells cannot migrate to specific destinations without specific information. Or do you claim that during ontogenetic development, biochemical manifestations of algorithms appear?

Intellectual dishonesty is what this is Wolfgang.

You were shown a page full of articles on how biochemical gradients effect neuron growth.

And now you drag the same straw herring through the argument.

Funny, the only person you are fooling is yourself.

Quote:

The hallmark of true science has always been dealing with concrete qualitative and quantitative relations in space and time in due consideration of logical consistency.

Like the biochemical gradients that effect neuron growth that you ignore.

I guess that your confirmation bias showing.

Quote:

Simply claiming that an algorithm can create the necessary amount of information does not help, if absolutely nothing suggests that something only partially similar to an algorithm is executed during ontogenesis.

And just ignoring possible mechanisms and inventing little fairies that do it for you is certainly not science.

Quote:

And even more important: Information created by an algorithm lacks degrees of freedom at the level of the created information. Yet during biological evolution, every part of an organism (e.g. a not yet existing pseudo-thumb of the panda-predecessors) can change as a function of necessity or advantage.

Typical human centric backwards thinking, there is no neccesity in natural selection. Go ahead put that fish in your catherdral and call it a bishop. It is more fooling yourself. There is no nessceity to natural selection.

Only from reproductive success, that is all.

Quote:

In principle it is possible to demonstrate the continuous transition from e.g. blue whales to humans by a series of pictures of real animals/humans, all having lived or still living on earth.

In the case of algorithm-created information however, such a continuous transition is not possible. Take e.g. (the information corresponding to) the decimal digits created by an algorithm calculating the square root of numbers. In the case of 2 we get 141421356... and in the case of 3 we get 173205080..., both representing somehow an infinite amount of information. Nevertheless, it is impossible to create by such a square-root algorithm sequences intermediate between these two sequences.

Well that is cute, ignore what the other side is saying, that inherent in biological function are the mechanisms needed for the potential to control growth. Take that fish put it in a cathedral and then compalain the the bishop isn't a super computer.

Another "F-". Go back to writing class.

Quote:

Also in the case of fractals, there is no continuous transition between e.g. the Mandelbrot set and the Julia set.

Look a mountain is not continous with a tree therefore I disprove natural selection.
"F--"

Quote:

Are you serious? Do you suggest that the complexity of a computer game of 97.28 kilobyte can be compared with the complexity of living systems?

Are you serious, is a fish a bishop and does it need a laptop?

Quote:

My argument:

"The information of the genetic code of HIV is less than 2.5 kilobyte. Computer science has shown how little this is. This genetic information can never be enough information for a virus to survive.

The part of the human genetic code which is used ( about 1 to 10%) can be compressed (at least) to about 10 or 100 megabyte. In many cases this information is even used in such an inefficient way that the information which is used to produce a protein is many times higher than the information which is stored in the final amino acid sequence of the protein."

Oh that right, you ignore the laws of physics so magic fairies have to fold proteins, EM forces could never do that.

Quote:

The actual content of most counterarguments presented in this discussion by orthodox skeptics is nothing more than circular reasoning (petitio principii), a logical fallacy already well-known to Aristotle. In our case the fallacy looks like this:

All that happens in living beings is by definition biochemical, and biochemistry is by definition explainable by (purely materialist) chemical and physical laws. Thus all facts concerning ontogeny or phylogeny must agree with pure materialism and every argument suggesting otherwise is necessarily wrong.

And what do you have?

ZERO EVIDENCE, confirmation bias and a fish in a miter that you say should have a sports car.

Quote:

A good example of this fallacy has been put forward in post #134:

"Creationists, in general, attempt to disprove scientific hypotheses by negation, i.e., such and such cannot be true because the probability of its occurrence is infinitesimally small.

This sort of reasoning is unscientific, because no matter how small the probability of some event may be in advance of its happening, if the event actually occurs, then its probability is instantly raised to Unity (100%)."

Without circular reasoning, from the low probabilities of a given explanation one can only conclude that at least one of the "scientific hypotheses" is extremely unlikely (and therefore also the explanation as whole) .

In post #125 I presented a simple logical argument showing that it is extremely improbable that two different reading frames of one DNA sequence can lead to functional protein parts.

Not really you just insisted that what you thought the model was was wrong.

You have demonstrated consistently poor style by straw building throughout.

Quote:

From the fact that such cases of frameshift actually exist, rocketdodger felt entitled to claim:

"An intelligent person would expect certain sequences to have a much higher probability of producing something meaningful after a shift than other sequences."

This is similar to:

An intelligent person would expect certain sentences to have a much higher probability of producing something meaningful after the character-transformation a -> b, b -> c, c -> d, … z -> a than other sentences.

But the fish has to have a plasma TV!

Quote:

From the fact that such frameshift cases have emerged during evolution, one cannot logically conclude that the currently prevailing theory of evolution is consistent with such frameshift cases. This conclusion is either the consequence of a confusion between the fact of evolution and the prevailing theory of evolution or again a petitio principii.

The pandualist explanation of such frameshift cases is simple:

Psychons, animating single amino acids (and having tendency to form chains in order to better survive), had already existed in huge numbers, when something similar to translation began to spread. Using existing RNA chains as templates, (precursors of) ribosomes chained amino acids, resulting in apriori random amino acid chains. The amino acids of such chains collaborated e.g. in defending themselves from getting destroyed. Their coordinated behaviour became more and more specific. By specialisation emerged psychons able to dominate such amino acid chains. If a widespread RNA chain was translated according to two different reading frames, two completely different, arbitrary amino acid chains emerged, both however with the potential of further evolution (independently from mutations, which are more problematic in such cases because one mutation affects two proteins in a completely different way).

But I know: Because of our past biological evolution, it is very difficult for us to change fundamental parts of our world views. So most of us simply die with the old beliefs and learn the more adequate new ones in a new life.

Cheers, Wolfgang

The truth is the fish is a fish, it swims in water, it is not a bishop and it does not need a car.

[rocketdodger]

I have a question -- what is the point of this thread?

Wogoga has admitted that psychons are responsible for the basic axioms of mathetmatics and the laws of physics, chemistry, etc..., so in effect his argument is nothing but a strange version of the simulation argument.

Rocks do not appear to be intelligent even though his psychons are responsible for them, so... he is forced to arrive at the same conclusions as the rest of us, with the addition of "psychons" which clearly don't bring anything to the table (other than some massive redefinitions -- no information is added)...

...so what, exactly, is the point here?

[kjkent1]

Originally Posted by wogaga

A good example of this fallacy has been put forward in post #134:

"Creationists, in general, attempt to disprove scientific hypotheses by negation, i.e., such and such cannot be true because the probability of its occurrence is infinitesimally small.

This sort of reasoning is unscientific, because no matter how small the probability of some event may be in advance of its happening, if the event actually occurs, then its probability is instantly raised to Unity (100%)."

Without circular reasoning, from the low probabilities of a given explanation one can only conclude that at least one of the "scientific hypotheses" is extremely unlikely (and therefore also the explanation as whole) .

Circular reasoning requires that a premise depend upon its conclusion. My statement is not circular, because it depends only on the fact that life is here in this universe.

That is: Life exists, therefore a physical explanation must be present. Otherwise, magic rules the universe.

Your statement that "from the low probabilities of a given explanation one can only conclude that at least one of the 'scientific hypotheses' is extremely unlikely" is also not circular -- however, it "is" wrong.

Suppose we have a room with only one entry and that entry is locked from the inside. Further suppose that there is a recently deceased person in the room with a bullet wound to the head, but no firearm is present in the room.

According to your theory, because it is so unlikely that anyone could have entered the room to kill the person, therefore, the person must have died due to a metaphysical cause.

Such a position would be regarded as "nuts" by any reasonable person.

Res Ipsa Loquitur

[kjkent1]

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

I have a question -- what is the point of this thread?

Wogoga has admitted that psychons are responsible for the basic axioms of mathetmatics and the laws of physics, chemistry, etc..., so in effect his argument is nothing but a strange version of the simulation argument.

Rocks do not appear to be intelligent even though his psychons are responsible for them, so... he is forced to arrive at the same conclusions as the rest of us, with the addition of "psychons" which clearly don't bring anything to the table (other than some massive redefinitions -- no information is added)...

...so what, exactly, is the point here?

It's an opportunity to argue endlessly. That's all.

[drkitten]

Originally Posted by wogoga

The information of the genetic code of HIV is less than 2.5 kilobyte. Computer science has shown how little this is. This genetic information can never be enough information for a virus to survive.

While this may be true -- although given the cavalier attitude you've expressed towards facts so far, I see no reason to believe it -- it would also be irrelevant.

The reason a virus can have so little information is because a virus doesn't need to maintain the information needed to replicate itself from the ground up. it uses the machinery of its host. (Similarly, a Java progam can be extremely short, because the Java program uses calls to the standard Java library or the operating system to do all the heavy lifting, and therefore doesn't have code for things like sorting a list).

A simple example : Here's a menu for a picnic. "Burgers, brats, chips, soda, cake."
According to standard information theory, that has fewer than 30 bits of information, nowhere near enough to completely specify a complex process of food preparation. But, of course, the reader doesn't need to have the process of food preparation spelled out for him. You already know what "burgers" are and how to prepare them of your own knowledge. The menu simply selects one of the procedures that you already know how to do, telling you to make burgers instead of, say, fried chicken or cucumber sandwiches. But at this point you know what the ingredients are for burgers and what the standard preparation method is. I never told you you would need to buy pickles (but not peanut butter), but you already knew that.

In AI, this is called "common-sense reasoning." In information theory, it's called "background information." In biology, it's called "environment." In real life, it's called "context."

And only in Wolfgang-speak is it called "non-existent."