Annoying creationists

[Yahzi]

No, I don't recall telling anyone to read the whole of my web site.

I'm sorry, but it's not worth my time anymore to link to the posts where you contradict yourself.

I hope I do not insult people (too often). On the other hand, I cannot pretend that I have found much of merit in your commentaries; it seems to me that they are often merely empty.

Irony much?

I have never asserted that the precursors to genes were created by chance. Just the reverse, I have asserted that the chance creation of genes from a primordial soup is infeasible and deplored this widespread assertion.

I'm sorry, but it's not worth my time anymore to link to the posts where you contradict yourself.

I really, genuinely and sincerely have not the slightest idea what point you are making about breakfast cereals or your beliefs about life and death.

Thast's quite evident. As is your obduracy.

Perhaps you would care to explain what part of this sentence is too difficult for you to comprehend:

Order can arise from simple mechancial laws and the interjection of energy.

Perhaps you could respond to how this statement allows for evolution without dragging in your concepts of the difference between alive and dead.

These are things you will have to explain and I will, or will not, reply depending upon whether I feel able to do so usefully.

You won't find any useful way to keep dodging the issue you brought up.

As for my forgetting your question - if that is so I am sorry you feel so cross. Perhaps you should phrase your question more clearly or ask other people for their opinions.

You didn't actually read the links I provided, did you. And you wonder why I am cross? You can't be bothered to read the posts - even when you wrote half of them. Yet you insist on declaring my posts empty and insulting. How would you even know? It's not like you actually read them...

You introduced the topic of vitalism. You suggested that information theory was different for living systems as opposed to non-living ones. And now you're trying to pretend you never typed those words.

This is your great argument? To deny your own words three times before the cock crows?

When faced with an incontrovertible example that you are wrong (the granola example), you pretend you don't understand the question anymore.

There is something else you are wrong about. I am not cross; I am amused. As is anyone else watching you play Judas to your own arguments.

 

[articulett]

You know, I've heard this claim before. The Light created Life thread is close to twice the size of this thread and still going strong it seems. As long as the thread doesn't die, Kleinman (and LCL) must be on to something.... right?

Maybe we need a new fallacy term. Appeal to forum longevity?

Yes! I like it. Appeal to fl for short. It's the notion that because people are still engaging in conversation with you that your idea contains truth.

I don't think anyone who understands the basics of evolution find any truth in Kleinman's point mutation theory. But I find it fascinating how he keeps ignoring the very pertinent information that, now that we can physically see and decode the genome--we can also see that point mutations may be the least means of mutation whereby different species emerge. It's like point mutations are to evolution what a tax rebate is to income. It is seldom something that moves someone into a different income bracket. It's contribution to income in minor. Kleinman is trying to prove that the rebate can't account for the income levels we see in people. We agree. We know that there are much larger sources of income than tax rebates.

We also know that there are much more significant mutations than point mutations in speciation (or macro evolution).

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I added the bold face in the quote. Running the numbers in ev appears to be showing that large populations do not give that much of an advantage in increasing the rate of evolution (when being driven by random point mutations and natural selection).

Where "large" is defined as 1 million or less and "not give that much of an advantage" is entirely undefined.

~~ Paul

 

[dv82matt]

When faced with an incontrovertible example that you are wrong (the granola example), you pretend you don't understand the question anymore.

Yahzi, it's pretty obvious that you simply misunderstood some of John's posts. I looked at the ones you linked to in your earlier post and they don't say what you seem to think they say.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

You still haven’t shown a two order of magnitude decrease in the generations of convergence...

Really?

genome size 1024
sites 16
widths 5/6
1 mu / genome

Population, Generations

4, 64697
8, 34337
16, 19531
32, 16994
64, 13491
128, 5202
256, 5724
512, 3900
1024, 2700
2048, 1800
4096, 1770
8192, 1641
16384, 1253
23100, 1275
32768, 1288
46200, 1709
65536, 922
92680, 718
110000, 776
262000, 702
524000, 642
1048000, 438


~~ Paul

 

[kjkent1]

You realize, of course, that until you modify ev to evolve the genome of some known living organism within the time that said organism would be reasonably estimated to have evolved in, that kleinman will simply waive you off as having failed to prove your theory.

Meanwhile, kleinman will never do any affirmative modification to the software, himself, because he might just defeat his entire belief system.

So, it's really up to you, and your fellow researchers, to work out models for the other various selection methods, until you have an ev version that reproduces a living organism. Immediately thereafter, kleinman, or someone like him, will declare this not good enough and demand that you produce a giraffe.

Cest' la vie!

 

[articulett]

Yahzi, it's pretty obvious that you simply misunderstood some of John's posts. I looked at the ones you linked to in your earlier post and they don't say what you seem to think they say.

Can you be more specific. While I agree that John Hewitt doesn't see how the cereal example shows that order can come by purely natural processes, I think Yahtzi was correct in his understanding of what John said and how he's dodged defining living objects from non-living. There are man things in between...just like there are many microevolutionary changes that account for macroevolution (speciation); it's not a single "event". There is no single generation when a tiger became a tiger and a lion became a lion--just a continual divergence from a common ancestor one through a series of small changes (of which point mutation is only one.) Granted, John is no Kleinmann (and it would be interesting to hear them debate with eachother)--but, like Kleinman, he has a belief that order cannot arise by purely natural means--and because he believes this (or can't recognize evidence which shows that it can and does) he posits a "supernatural" explanation (god) must have had a hand in the formation of life.

 

[Yahzi]

Yahzi, it's pretty obvious that you simply misunderstood some of John's posts. I looked at the ones you linked to in your earlier post and they don't say what you seem to think they say.

This certainly could be possible; I have confused Klienman and Hewitt at least once before, so I am prepared to learn I have done it again.

Thus, could you please be more specific? Didn't Hewitt assert that evolutionists claim ribozymes arose through "chance?" Didn't I point out that granola shows that order can arise from simple mechanics, and didn't he respond to that by saying there was a difference between living and dead?

What part of this did I get confused on?

 

[dv82matt]

Can you be more specific. While I agree that John Hewitt doesn't see how the cereal example shows that order can come by purely natural processes, I think Yahtzi was correct in his understanding of what John said

Well if you look at John's initial post http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2182801#post2182801 he says,

And, just by CHANCE, this self-propagating chemistry (the details of which I look forward to reading) happens to produce a ribozyme, a piece of RNA which has the amazing property of being able to copy itself, from precursors that had the equally amazing properties of being present in the first place and of not diffusing off into the prebiotic soup.

He is arguing against chance as being a mechanism behind the genesis of genes.

Yahzi responded with this:

I know that evolution doesn't happen by chance. I learned this from granola.

This misses the point since John was speaking in context of abiogenesis rather than evolution proper. And in any case John was arguing against chance.

Yahzi continues:

Shake a box of granola gently, and what happens? The the little flakes sink to the bottom, and the big pieces float to the top where you can eat them by hand. Some time ago I noticed this sorting effect happens every single time. And, not being scientifically illiterate, I realized it wasn't because of chance.

Yahzi seems to be trying to make the point that order arising spontaneously from non-order is not dependent on chance. Which is fine, but it actually puts him in agreement with John on this point.

and how he's dodged defining living objects from non-living.

Well he initially spoke of biological complexity and inanimate order. It was Yahzi who brought up live and dead. But the respective concepts are not synonomous.

There are man things in between...just like there are many microevolutionary changes that account for macroevolution (speciation); it's not a single "event". There is no single generation when a tiger became a tiger and a lion became a lion--just a continual divergence from a common ancestor one through a series of small changes (of which point mutation is only one.)

I agree. Is this something John disagrees with? I have not gotten that impression.

Granted, John is no Kleinmann (and it would be interesting to hear them debate with eachother)--but, like Kleinman, he has a belief that order cannot arise by purely natural means--and because he believes this (or can't recognize evidence which shows that it can and does) he posits a "supernatural" explanation (god) must have had a hand in the formation of life.

Hmmm... fair enough. I suppose there's a bit of history here that I am not aware of.

 

[dv82matt]

This certainly could be possible; I have confused Klienman and Hewitt at least once before, so I am prepared to learn I have done it again.

Thus, could you please be more specific? Didn't Hewitt assert that evolutionists claim ribozymes arose through "chance?"

Hewitt experessed incredulity that ribozymes could arise by chance.

Didn't I point out that granola shows that order can arise from simple mechanics,

Indeed you did. I question the relevance of the analogy.

and didn't he respond to that by saying there was a difference between living and dead?

Not exactly. He said there was a difference between biological complexity and inanimate order.

 

[John Hewitt]

Hewitt experessed incredulity that ribozymes could arise by chance.
Indeed you did. I question the relevance of the analogy.
Not exactly. He said there was a difference between biological complexity and inanimate order.

Thank you dv82matt, you said those things very well.

 

[kleinman]

Annoying Creationists

Paul, I’ve been doing a little thinking about your concept of Rcapacity and why it prevents ev from converging. It seems that when you increase the genome length in ev, it requires more than a proportional increase in the generations for convergence when all other parameters are held constant. When you increase the genome length sufficiently such that Rfrequency exceeds Rcapacity, ev behaves as if you turned off selection. I don’t believe that increasing genome length prevents the weight matrix from identifying a binding site. What I believe is happening is that as you increase the length of the genome, mistakes in the non-binding site region of the genome have increasing influence on the selection process. When the non-binding site region is made large enough, mistakes in this portion of the genome dominate the selection process preventing binding sites from evolving in the binding site portion of the genome.

If there were no truth in my arguments, this thread would have died long ago.

Your narcissism is in full display there. Truth is not a prerequisite for argumentative staying power. In case you haven't noticed, the law of Internet forums is the last person who posts wins, so a thread can go on forever with no truth on either side.

That sounds really boring.

I don’t have a definition for the difference between macro and microevolution that will give you a warm, tingly feeling.

What an obnoxious remark. I'm not looking for a warm, tingly, feeling there. I'm looking for a rigorous definition we can apply mathematics to. Your admission reveals why you feel you can deny moving goal posts. You use fuzzy goal posts so you can deny they move. Not specifying exactly where your goal posts reside allows you to dismiss new evidence of macro evolution by claiming it missed goals you only vaguely defined. Nice try.

You evolutionarians are the ones who say that science explains everything.

If there were no truth in my arguments, this thread would have died long ago.

Your narcissism is in full display there. Truth is not a prerequisite for argumentative staying power. In case you haven't noticed, the law of Internet forums is the last person who posts wins, so a thread can go on forever with no truth on either side.

You know, I've heard this claim before. The

Light created Life thread is close to twice the size of this thread and still going strong it seems. As long as the thread doesn't die, Kleinman (and LCL) must be on to something.... right?

Less_than_three, do you mind if I use your logic to describe Darwinism and the theory of evolution?

I added the bold face in the quote. Running the numbers in ev appears to be showing that large populations do not give that much of an advantage in increasing the rate of evolution (when being driven by random point mutations and natural selection).

Where "large" is defined as 1 million or less and "not give that much of an advantage" is entirely undefined.

This is why I think that larger populations have to be run in ev.

You still haven’t shown a two order of magnitude decrease in the generations of convergence...

Really?

genome size 1024
sites 16
widths 5/6
1 mu / genome

Population, Generations

4, 64697
8, 34337
16, 19531
32, 16994
64, 13491
128, 5202
256, 5724
512, 3900
1024, 2700
2048, 1800
4096, 1770
8192, 1641
16384, 1253
23100, 1275
32768, 1288
46200, 1709
65536, 922
92680, 718
110000, 776
262000, 702
524000, 642
1048000, 438

Why didn’t you include the population=2 case in that series? That case doesn’t converge at all. From a population of 10^1 to a population of 10^6 you still don’t get a 10^2 drop in the generations for convergence and most of that drop in the generations for convergence occurs with the first 10^5 population. You are really struggling to make a point.

You realize, of course, that until you modify ev to evolve the genome of some known living organism within the time that said organism would be reasonably estimated to have evolved in, that kleinman will simply waive you off as having failed to prove your theory.

Meanwhile, kleinman will never do any affirmative modification to the software, himself, because he might just defeat his entire belief system.

So, it's really up to you, and your fellow researchers, to work out models for the other various selection methods, until you have an ev version that reproduces a living organism. Immediately thereafter, kleinman, or someone like him, will declare this not good enough and demand that you produce a giraffe.

Kjkent1, you do not understand this debate. As I have written numerous times in this thread previously, the only reason I get traction in this discussion is that I am using an evolutionarian written, peer reviewed and published model of random point mutations and natural selection.

Evolutionarians have questioned the results I have obtained with their own sanctioned model. Why would evolutionarians believe any modification I do to their model? If I thought there was a selection method or mechanism for mutation other than random point mutations that would make your theory work, I would tell you, but I don’t believe there are any such selection methods or mechanisms for mutation that would overcome this mathematical hurdle.

I encourage evolutionarians to include other selection methods and mechanisms of mutations to their mathematical models, so that they convince themselves of the mathematical impossibility of their theory.

 

[I less than three logic]

Less_than_three, do you mind if I use your logic to describe Darwinism and the theory of evolution?

I suppose that depends on how you'd like to use it. If you can find any one that makes the claim that evolution is true for no other reason than people are still talking about it, then by all means use it. However, I suspect that you're only interested in it because you've already completed the design phase and are all ready to begin construction of your straw man.

 

[kleinman]

Annoying Creationists

Less_than_three, do you mind if I use your logic to describe Darwinism and the theory of evolution?

I suppose that depends on how you'd like to use it. If you can find any one that makes the claim that evolution is true for no other reason than people are still talking about it, then by all means use it. However, I suspect that you're only interested in it because you've already completed the design phase and are all ready to begin construction of your straw man.

Dr Schneider said the following on his ev blog web site located at http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/blog-ev.html

I went to

Pubmed Central and searched for 'evolution'. I found 19250 papers all of which you can read!

It looks like Dr Schneider is arguing that evolution is true since so many people are talking about it. I set up no straw man on this forum. I took an evolutionarian written, peer reviewed and published model of random point mutation and natural selection and post the data that shows how slow this process is when realistic parameters are used in the program. Run the program yourself and see whether what I say is true or not. What has happened is exactly as I told Dr Schneider months ago which was evolutionarians would question the validity of the ev model.

The theory of evolution started without a mathematical basis and remains that way.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Paul, I’ve been doing a little thinking about your concept of Rcapacity and why it prevents ev from converging. It seems that when you increase the genome length in ev, it requires more than a proportional increase in the generations for convergence when all other parameters are held constant. When you increase the genome length sufficiently such that Rfrequency exceeds Rcapacity, ev behaves as if you turned off selection. I don’t believe that increasing genome length prevents the weight matrix from identifying a binding site. What I believe is happening is that as you increase the length of the genome, mistakes in the non-binding site region of the genome have increasing influence on the selection process. When the non-binding site region is made large enough, mistakes in this portion of the genome dominate the selection process preventing binding sites from evolving in the binding site portion of the genome.

What evolves is a code or tag that identifies binding sites while not appearing anywhere else on the chromosome. This code is pictured in the sequence logo and consists of Rsequence bits of information. You'll notice that the total number of bits in the sequence logo equals Rsequence.

If Rcapacity < Rfrequency, then there are not enough bases in the binding sites to contain a code unique to the sites (more or less). Another way to think of it is that the threshold can't get high enough to exclude sufficient combinations of bases, so that a distinction between binding sites and other sites is impossible.

So your last two sentences are somewhat accurate. However, if you watch a simulation of this situation, you will see the best creature quickly has exactly 16 mistakes, a high age (I'm looking at a mean age of 1,920 right now), but just can't get anywhere. I wouldn't say that non-binding mistakes dominate. I'd say that the weight matrix just can't discriminate.

~~ Paul

 

[kleinman]

Annoying Creationists

Paul, I’ve been doing a little thinking about your concept of Rcapacity and why it prevents ev from converging. It seems that when you increase the genome length in ev, it requires more than a proportional increase in the generations for convergence when all other parameters are held constant. When you increase the genome length sufficiently such that Rfrequency exceeds Rcapacity, ev behaves as if you turned off selection. I don’t believe that increasing genome length prevents the weight matrix from identifying a binding site. What I believe is happening is that as you increase the length of the genome, mistakes in the non-binding site region of the genome have increasing influence on the selection process. When the non-binding site region is made large enough, mistakes in this portion of the genome dominate the selection process preventing binding sites from evolving in the binding site portion of the genome.

What evolves is a code or tag that identifies binding sites while not appearing anywhere else on the chromosome. This code is pictured in the sequence logo and consists of Rsequence bits of information. You'll notice that the total number of bits in the sequence logo equals Rsequence.

If Rcapacity < Rfrequency, then there are not enough bases in the binding sites to contain a code unique to the sites (more or less). Another way to think of it is that the threshold can't get high enough to exclude sufficient combinations of bases, so that a distinction between binding sites and other sites is impossible.

So your last two sentences are somewhat accurate. However, if you watch a simulation of this situation, you will see the best creature quickly has exactly 16 mistakes, a high age (I'm looking at a mean age of 1,920 right now), but just can't get anywhere. I wouldn't say that non-binding mistakes dominate. I'd say that the weight matrix just can't discriminate.

What is it about a genome length that prevents the weight matrix from identifying (discriminating) a binding site? If you use a mutation rate that is fixed to a specific number of bases, the only thing that changes in the model is the number of mistakes which can occur on the non-binding site region of the genome. If it is the mistakes in the non-binding site region that is driving selection, this would explain why the binding site region is not evolving. You can easily check this out by keeping track of mistakes in both the binding site region and non-binding site region and counting which mistakes are driving the selection process.

 

[I less than three logic]

Dr Schneider said the following on his ev blog web site located at http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/blog-ev.html

It looks like Dr Schneider is arguing that evolution is true since so many people are talking about it. I set up no straw man on this forum. I took an evolutionarian written, peer reviewed and published model of random point mutation and natural selection and post the data that shows how slow this process is when realistic parameters are used in the program. Run the program yourself and see whether what I say is true or not. What has happened is exactly as I told Dr Schneider months ago which was evolutionarians would question the validity of the ev model.

The theory of evolution started without a mathematical basis and remains that way.

You haven't set up any straw men? Not even the one in this post here? On that page you linked to, Dr. Schneider does appear to use a fallacious appeal to popularity, claiming people should believe him because of how many papers on evolution exist, but no where, not even your quoted text, does he claim that evolution is true for no other reason than people are talking about it. Your arguing against a position that doesn't appear to exist in order to claim your easy victory, that is a straw man whether you think so or not.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Why didn’t you include the population=2 case in that series? That case doesn’t converge at all. From a population of 10^1 to a population of 10^6 you still don’t get a 10^2 drop in the generations for convergence and most of that drop in the generations for convergence occurs with the first 10^5 population. You are really struggling to make a point.

Oh, I have to get a factor of 100 drop beginning with a population of 10. I did not know that was a requirement.

Does this count?

genome size 1024
sites 8
width 9/10 (Rcapacity 20)
1 mutation / 512 bases

population, generations

10, 24000
32, 9900
64, 5000
128, 3000
256, 4600
512, 1600
2048, 1600
65536, 175


~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

What is it about a genome length that prevents the weight matrix from identifying (discriminating) a binding site? If you use a mutation rate that is fixed to a specific number of bases, the only thing that changes in the model is the number of mistakes which can occur on the non-binding site region of the genome. If it is the mistakes in the non-binding site region that is driving selection, this would explain why the binding site region is not evolving. You can easily check this out by keeping track of mistakes in both the binding site region and non-binding site region and counting which mistakes are driving the selection process.

The other thing that changes is that the binding site weightings cannot exceed the threshold.

~~ Paul

 

[kleinman]

Annoying Creationists

You haven't set up any straw men? Not even the one in this post here?

You evolutionarians need a new play book. If the only argument you can make is this silly straw man argument, you don’t make much of a case. At least Paul is trying to make a mathematical case with ev, weak as it is.

Why didn’t you include the population=2 case in that series? That case doesn’t converge at all. From a population of 10^1 to a population of 10^6 you still don’t get a 10^2 drop in the generations for convergence and most of that drop in the generations for convergence occurs with the first 10^5 population. You are really struggling to make a point.

Oh, I have to get a factor of 100 drop beginning with a population of 10. I did not know that was a requirement.

Does this count?

genome size 1024
sites 8
width 9/10 (Rcapacity 20)
1 mutation / 512 bases

population, generations

10, 24000
32, 9900
64, 5000
128, 3000
256, 4600
512, 1600
2048, 1600
65536, 175

Of course that is a requirement; the point of increasing population is to show that you get sufficient reduction in the generations for convergence to support your theory.

You are still struggling to make a point, but perhaps you are finding the right combination of genome length, population, binding site number, binding site width, and mutation rate that may give some support to your theory. Why didn’t you post any points between 2048 and 65536? Why don’t you extend this series to a population of 1 meg and see whether you can get down close to Adequate’s value of 1 generation for an infinite population?

I also note something peculiar in your data. You posted the following series recently:

population 32
binding sites 8
weight width 9
site width 10
1 mutation / 512 bases

genome size, generations

1024, 8000
2048, 20000
4096, 34000
8192, 37000
16384, 76000
32768, 272000
65536, 392000
128000, 991000

In one series you have a generations of convergence of 9900 generations in the first series (the second data point) and 8000 generations for the second series (the first data point) when both cases should give identical results. Are you using identical random seeds?

Your latest un-retracted extrapolation for the evolution of 8 binding sites, population 32, weight width 9, site width 10, 1 mutation / 512 bases would require 2 billion generations to evolve for a mutation rate of 10^-6 and 63 million generations to evolve with a population of 1 meg. Are you going to modify your extrapolation based on your most recent data posted above?