What evidence is there for evolution being non-random?

[Wings]

What if I'm not talking to the general public?

I'm not saying they do this - I don't know what they do, but I would assume that they would either avoid random and non-random completely or expand on what the words mean, if they use them, to clairify what they mean in the context of the discussion.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Wings-

Do you believe it is misleading to model evolution as a stochastic process?

 

[rittjc]

I'm not really disagreeing with you. I mean, I do feel that both terms are misleading. That's simply my assumption as to the reasoning why they would use non-random.

Of course, I'm sure there's more to it than simply that they use non-random because the general idea on random is the opposite of what occurs in evolution due to random selection. I probably have some incorrect ideas on this, but perhaps I can get a better understanding as I continue studying.

The term is dynamic to an evolutionist. It is usually used as the opening number on the tap dancing tour.

Random = a term interpreted in how you need it at the time.

 

[Hokulele]

The laws of physics claim the physical realm cannot create itself so something outside the realm of physics must have created this dimension and could not be physical itself or it is not the creator of the physical.

I have never heard this before. Can you provide a source for this?

 

[Wings]

The term is dynamic to an evolutionist. It is usually used as the opening number on the tap dancing tour.

Random = a term interpreted in how you need it at the time.

The term is dynamic to everybody.

 

[TTLer]

Please, please, appealing to a reasonable moderator, this thread has been beaten to death and lost all true direction, please close it out!

 

[articulett]

Trillions? I don't think trillions.

Of course, I don't really know, but then again, neither do you. So, the math in the rest of your post doesn't mean much. No one really knows how many mutations are needed to get from one species to another, although we can make a few educated guesses by looking at the differences between the DNA of two different species, which at least gives us a lower bound on the number of things that have to be changed.

Either way, regardless of specific numbers, you still have a problem. You forgot that the mutated ones reproduce, and pass along that beneficial mutation. If you redo the math that way, the numbers look better for our side.

Plus...genomes don't just alter by point mutation... in fact...that is probably the least likely way...there's all sorts of ways--insertions, duplications, non-disjunction, fusion, translocations, recombinations, unequal crossing over-- we can SEE what happened by looking at the DNA. Look--
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=2199739#post2199739

And more isn't better. There are trees that have way more genes than we do...in fact, I think even onions do. Genomes are like computer programs with bugs and quirks...more bits doesn't mean better programs... and the programs are really just algorithms to make organisms that make more organisms.

And most mutations occur in junk DNA since most of our DNA is junk--they have no affect at all. This stuff is really worth understanding... Look at the above link and see what we can see. And we have much more specific information that that...we have translated the damn code.

 

[Wings]

Wings-

Do you believe it is misleading to model evolution as a stochastic process?

I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. I don't understand enough about stochastic processes and how they relate to evolutionary theory to answer this question. However, I'm welcome to being educated on it.

I'm pretty much using this thread as a supplement to my studying on evolution.

EDIT: I'm studying up on stochastic processes right now, so I'm going to try and see what I can pick up from them, but articulett did make the point to me that it isn't the process that's random, but the variables, or something like that.

 

[Schneibster]

I'll point a couple of things out.

First, a very respected and senior evolutionary biologist, and a teacher of evolutionary biology at the University of California,You described the course of evolution, in a source articulett quoted, as "haphazard." I posted the quote and a link to the article. The purpose of the article was specifically to refute cretinist claims that "evilution is random." Yet, there's that word, "haphazard," right in the middle of it. Even in an article specifically intended to deal with precisely this issue, a true and proper scientist cannot avoid, in good conscience, describing the overall course of evolution as "haphazard." Here is the quote:

"The fossil record shows that life has evolved in a haphazard fashion."

Here is the link. You will find the quote at the beginning of the summation, the end of the article. Note that it is one of a series of colloquium papers on evolution, presented in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. This is an authoritative source.

Second, I'd like to point out a couple of things I have said over the course of this conversation:
1. While saying that "evolution is not random" is probably a good idea from a political point of view, when speaking to the general public, it's not such a good idea when dealing with people who have specific training in the physical sciences. It is, in fact, technically incorrect, in a number of ways. And you can expect that people with technical training in the physical sciences will spot all of those ways very quickly, and be very skeptical when they encounter it.
2. I would not describe evolution as either random or non-random. It is complex, it is chaotic, it is emergent. These are characteristics that we are finding increasingly in many large physical systems. Evolution deserves recognition as one of these types of systems; and being recognized as one, it will receive the support of being "one of those types of things," immediately recognized by anyone with knowledge of these types of systems as a member of this class. It also deserves the support of the physical sciences, and to the extent that it conforms to these sorts of paradigms, it becomes much more easily comprehensible to those who pursue them, and therefore more likely to be so supported.

I think that the objections made in this thread are not scientific, but political. As has been repeatedly said,

The political forum is that way ->

 

[Schneibster]

Please, please, appealing to a reasonable moderator, this thread has been beaten to death and lost all true direction, please close it out!

You have GOT to be kidding. Please review the "Annoying Creationists" thread on this same forum. Talk to you next month.

 

[Hokulele]

<snip>

2. I would not describe evolution as either random or non-random. It is complex, it is chaotic, it is emergent. These are characteristics that we are finding increasingly in many large physical systems. Evolution deserves recognition as one of these types of systems; and being recognized as one, it will receive the support of being "one of those types of things," immediately recognized by anyone with knowledge of these types of systems as a member of this class. It also deserves the support of the physical sciences, and to the extent that it conforms to these sorts of paradigms, it becomes much more easily comprehensible to those who pursue them, and therefore more likely to be so supported.

<snip>

I think this sums it up very well. Mijopaalmc, would you agree with this statement?

 

[mijopaalmc]

I think this sums it up very well. Mijopaalmc, would you agree with this statement?

I think there is a fundamental difference between chaos and randomness. The definition that I have been able to pick up online all deal with the sensitive dependence on initial conditions, yet with randomness it is possible to start with identical initial conditions to an arbitrary of precision and yet end up with identical initial conditions. I will explain further but I am still trying to sort things out myself.

 

[VonNeumann]

This describes the frameshift mutation of nylonase: http://www.nmsr.org/nylon.htm
The protein is altered completely...in the same way that a point mutation can cause dwarfism and alter the way someone looks completely. ..... It's not superimposed or intended any more than dwarfism is. .

You completely miss what I said. The frame-shift mutation is not amazing. It is fairly ordinary. Transcription errors such as this are about as simple as they get. Transcription starting and ending in the wrong spot is fairly common. You lecture me with "It's not amazing Von.". Listen this time. I'll say it again: the frame-shift mutation is relatively trivial.

I believe you are still clueless about the informational superposition of the codons. You apparently do not understand this. The superposition is a structural thing that can be observed. If I have the string ABCDE and I have the string BCDEF, I can have both strings by superposing them: ABCDEF. That is a fact they are superimposed. But this is uninteresting because ABCDE doesn't say anything interesting, and BCDEF doesn't say anything interesting.

Now here is what you don't get so listen this time. The code for enzyme A, if that's what the bacteria has needed for most or all of it's time on Earth, is string A (these are base pairs in the DNA), must have been in the bacteria's DNA for a very long time. It is reasonable to expect this time period to be hundreds of millions of years. It is also reasonable to expect that this code for enzyme A has not changed or not changed much in that period, because natural selection would cull out errors along the way -- this bacteria needs an accurate code for this vital enzyme A. Then one day, the bacteria needs an enzyme B. Does it have to go through many steps of mutation and selection, gradualistically building new code for the needed enzyme B? No. By some strange luck, it already has it. Is it some string somewhere else in the bacteria's DNA? No. It is the same string (structurally superimposed). If you transcribe the code for enzyme A, but start slightly displaced, the protein expressed is enzyme B. The string is not trivial. It is quite long. It was there as long as the bacteria needed the enzyme A. There was no evolution of this string in 1930 so the bacteria could digest nylon. Apparently, the evolution of this code happened long before, maybe millions of years before.

That is what you haven't explained. What natural selection did in the 1930s to select this frame-shift transcription is not at all surprising. What is surprising is that the string of code for the enzyme was in the bacteria's genome all along. How do you explain that this string for nylonase had been in the genome, possibly for hundreds of millions of years when there was no need for it.

Maybe you might say that there was some natural polymer like nylon floating around in the pre-cambrian? That would be more plausible than your saying that the code "just happened to be there".

You know, it is one thing to say that the code for nylonase "just happened to be there" if it existed innocuously somewhere else in the DNA, but it exists right on top of the code for the other enzyme. That's HOW we know it was there so long before it was needed.

Perhaps you lack the feel for the vanishingly small probability of these two strings for entirely different proteins overlaying each other. That would be like not being surprised that you could take Great Expectations and shift the ASCII codes by one bit, re-frame the bytes, and end up with Tale of Two Cities! If someone discovered those two books were indeed frame shifted from each other, it would be a tad astonishing, yes? As hard to believe that Dickens could have been brilliant enough to pull it off (ignoring that Ascii hadn't been invented yet), it would be lunacy to say it was done by accident. ...or would you think it were no big deal?

 

[articulett]

I think there is a fundamental difference between chaos and randomness. The definition that I have been able to pick up online all deal with the sensitive dependence on initial conditions, yet with randomness it is possible to start with identical initial conditions to an arbitrary of precision and yet end up with identical initial conditions. I will explain further but I am still trying to sort things out myself.

Here... this will help you out...
http://www.newscientist.com/channel...ruit-flies-display-rudimentary-free-will.html

 

[VonNeumann]

I think there is a fundamental difference between chaos and randomness. The definition that I have been able to pick up online all deal with the sensitive dependence on initial conditions, yet with randomness it is possible to start with identical initial conditions to an arbitrary of precision and yet end up with identical initial conditions. I will explain further but I am still trying to sort things out myself.

I think Chaos has the fundamental characteristic as emerging from recursive processing through a non-linear transfer function. Chaos can be generated algorithmically, even very simplistically.

True randomness, on the other hand, cannot emerge from any algorithm that is not itself as complex as the randomness. For instance, the transcendental number pi is endless in digits yet it can be produced by a finite (even a very small) algorithm so pi is not random. A sequence of random numbers (concatenated to make endless digits) if truly random, cannot be produced by an algorithm that is less complex that the sequence of random numbers, itself.

Consider also, for what it's worth, that any arbitrary number picked on the number line (like imagine a very sharp scribe where you pick a fine point on a line) is almost 100% likely to be random, by this algorithmic definition. There is almost zero probability of picking a number like 1.000000..... So, you could look at this as revealing that pure mathematics is almost completely random.

So I agree with your statement that chaos and randomness are fundamentally different, but I thought you left out these things in your reasons why.

 

[articulett]

Von... you do realize that all dogs come from wolves, right... that the genes in these ancestral wolves contained all the information for producing the dogs we see today, right.... our ability to digest lactose arose out of the stuff that was there too... all mutations do... If you are reading a whole bunch of books backwards, eventually you'll get some very amazing messages... maybe just the message you need to hear to prod you in some new direction--

Of course each new mutation or change has to be some kind of tweaking of what is there...that is all it can be! Genes make proteins that have shapes...it's like you suddenly found a new way to fold your clothes so they fit in your new drawer in a way they couldn't before... all of life evolved to fill the niches it is in... not all niches can support life... but life seems to find a way to fit into even the most extreme niches...

The code for a eventual chihuahua was in the wolf ancestor in the beginning...chihuahuas can still mate with wolves... That chihuahua potential was in the wolf for eons...even before it was a wolf-- You seem to see something amazing that really isn't--some indicator of design that is unwarranted. But whatever. All the genes of humanity alive today existed in some form in the most recent human ancestor of us all. Including the eventual ability to digest lactose...eons before we'd domesticate cattle-- But such mutations are happening all the time! They just don't mean anything or show up until or unless they give the possessor a reproductive advantage--and then they can take off and spread... Many times things could have evolved to digest nylon...maybe even better than nylonase... but until it ends up on nylon (where it would find no competitors) it is a non-event in evolution. Our whole evolutionary history is filled with these little twists and turns and one in a billion events or whatever. All life forms contain the history of evolutions successes in their genomes. We cannot know all the life forms that never got to be...

And it's not astonishing in the way you imagine with your Dickens analogy... Bacteria have thousands of genes that govern it's living, replication, and demise--they multiply like crazy, because they can...they're always coming up with some new trick amongst all their replications...one gene was altered...and it altered one proteins so that it folded differently and became more functional in the environment it was in, instead of less functional. It would be as if your dog developed a mutation that could make it get nutrients from grazing, so that meat wouldn't be as essential to it's diet.

 

[Hokulele]

I think there is a fundamental difference between chaos and randomness. The definition that I have been able to pick up online all deal with the sensitive dependence on initial conditions, yet with randomness it is possible to start with identical initial conditions to an arbitrary of precision and yet end up with identical initial conditions. I will explain further but I am still trying to sort things out myself.

There are several portions of chaos theory, different ones can apply to different components of the theory of evolution. The one I have been trying to highlight is the concept of a strange attractor, the Lorenz Attractor being the most famous. These can be used to model complex behavior in multiple dimensions, showing both the complexity that can arise from simple equations (incorporating the concept of sensitivity to initial conditions), as well as showing how these systems are bounded and deterministic.

I am not sure what you mean by the phrase "yet with randomness it is possible to start with identical initial conditions to an arbitrary of precision and yet end up with identical initial conditions." Can you please clarify?

And for a last question, does this mean you do not believe evolution is chaotic, but rather random?

ETA: I've thought about this a bit more, and it sounds like there is a bit of the Hindustani's examining elephants going on here. When I am describing evolution, I mean it in the context of the system, rather than the component parts. I think that was the direction Schneibster was going with the bit I quoted from him. I am going to stick with my original wishy-washy position in that yes, there are ways to define random that can be applied to evolution, but it is not the best term, even ignoring the political aspects. I think if this thread evolves into a description of the best phrasing, which is what I was trying to do, I'll stick around. If this is just going to be an endless repetition of "random!" "non-random!", I think I will bow out. I can see the political aspects of this, which is why in a sense I agree with articulett, and cannot see how this could end up without an agreement to disagree.

I will also make sure I avoid the "r" word in the future to avoid endless discussions and instead stick with "complex", "chaotic", and "emergent". <insert smiley here>

 

[Foster Zygote]

Oh, well, if Richard Dawkins said it, that settles it for me. Good thing he didn't claim the world was flat. I would hate having to believe in his philosophies and tell everyone the world is flat.

Who is Richard Dawkins? Another evolutionist demagogue? Is he not just a man with an opinion? Screw Richard Dawkins and the horse he rode in on. He just preached his personal religion. Do you want to invoke Christian religious preachers and let their word be a settling factor?

Hold the man worship please, it is quite embarrassing.

Still no comment on the experimental verifications of Special Relativity? How about pointing to the laws of physics that state that the universe had to have been created? May I take this as provisional evidence that you have a strong tendency to pretend to understand subjects about which you have highly emotional prejudices?

I've noticed that it's perfectly acceptable for you to cite Behe, even greatly exaggerating his status in the scientific community, but even a simple mention of Dawkins' name, in a comment regarding his statement leading to this very thread, is an excuse for the histrionics we see above. I've concluded that your goal is not to debate evidence (you have yet to provide any) but rather to engage in angry exchanges of name calling and defamation as you did in your characterization of many people as "Christian haters" based on the innocuous comment of one person. You can't even resist openly condescending to Meadmaker, who has been nothing but polite to you. You are free to continue your obstreperous behavior if it pleases you, but it can't hide that fact that you have nothing of substance to present.

 

[Rodney]

It's not the forum... but yes, lots of people thought there were WMDs...because we didnt' understand how willing our president was to lie...and he's on tape after Katrina saying he didn't know the levees would break-- .... and then video tape surfaces when he was told just that...and he offered his prayers... talking with hardcore republicans is the same as talking to creationists as far as I'm concerned...they just deny all evidence that doesn't fit the view they want while exaggerating the misdeeds of those who belong to other parties...
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2006/03/02/foreman.fema.tape.cnn
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/16/white-house-plame-leak/
http://www.bushlies.net/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5jiHT3zdFc&mode=related&search=

Go pledge your allegiances elsewhere. This administration is the most anti-science administration we have had to date and America has been slipping in both math and the sciences since he took office and inflicted his faith based policies on Americans at tax payer expense...

And if you didn't know about the hurricane Katrina, perhaps it's your news source and your politics that kept you in the dark.. http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/15-07/st_infoporn

I'll leave this off-topic portion of the thread with excerpts from a speech of October 9, 2002: "[Saddam Hussein] has chemical and biological weapons, as well as missiles with ranges in excess of the 150 kilometers restriction imposed by the United Nations . . . Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort over the last four years . . . a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his [Saddam's] hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security and that of our allies in the Persian Gulf region."

No, it wasn't George Bush who said that, but John Kerry -- prior to Kerry voting to give Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq.

Getting back on topic, how would you answer the OP?

The fundamental point is that information cannot be added by natural selection, but only by mutations, which are random.

 

[Meadmaker]

Trillions was an attempt to throw you a bone.

There are trillions of organisms, and trillions of generations, (in the case of small critters anyway) but we don't need trillions of changes. That makes the numbers look better for us.

But the concepts of evolution would have you believe that every bad mutation would die right off the back and you would never see them.

My concepts of evolution wouldn't have you believe that, except with very, very, bad mutations, like ones that killed the mutants or made them sterile.

For the rest of the mutations, they are just a little bit bad or a little bit good, which means that it will take a long time for the better ones to dominate the gene pool, because the process by which they gain an advantage is ....drum roll please....random. Their chance of surviving and reproducing is only a little bit better than nonmutants, so it will be many generations before you see dominance, and a very long time before the slightly bad mutations are completely eliminated.