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What evidence is there for evolution being non-random?

Now: Is an elephant one "replicator" or billions?

Isuppose one's answer to the question of evolution at the level of the organism, or the gene will illuminate that question...
 
I dilsike the use of nonrandom, aminly as (to me) it implies a predefined direction to the evolution of features, as against a progressive optimisation for a particular environment.

This leads some (more reasonable, but scientifically illiterate) believers to think that the creator could have "known" that humanity, or something like humanity was inevitable from the initial conditions on Earth when it was created.

Optimisation is inevitable, the type of optimisation is not.

That is my main objection, and my most fundamental philosophical objection.

I actually would argue that the fundamental method of selection for any particular trait is probabilistic with respect to the trait, it is more than just the only way to model selection. With this one can actually work out how likely something is to spread.

The probabilistic nature of natural selection is also the biggest difference from artificial selection, where the selection efficiency is closer to 100% and not 1%. As the selection efficiency is in the low percentages, I would argue that this is important; if it were in ~80%+ it wouldn't matter whether it were random or nonrandom.

With the positive feedback loops of evolving species altering the ecology of their predators/prey/competitors, especially after extinction events, I would argue that the environment is random too.

Maybe nobody else has come across the type of believer that I mentioned above, but many English, Anglican Bishops* seem to fit into this category, another was my RE teacher at school.


*I don't know of many others, but I think that the C of E has made England very secular...

Jim

Back to the replicator derail, what about colony organisms?

Are sexual organisms just delivery systems for testes or ovaries?
 
I just want to repost this because it demonstrates that articulett know my stance on intelligent design and is deliberately misrepresenting me when she say that I support intelligent design or creationism (because we all they are the same thing:rolleyes:) when I say evolution is random.

mijopaalmc said:
Note:

I would like to point out that in the Fossil and Evolution thread:

  1. I retracted my OP

    mijopaalmc said:
    Ben-

    Thank you for your clearly written explanation. I think that it, along with Dr. Adquate's information about the forams, clears up a lot of questions I had about evolutionary time frame. I will give a more complete explanation of my reasoning later. Suffice it to say, I retract the questions (in so far as I asked any) in my OP.

    That is not say that I do not still have problems with the way in which my question was dealt from both a pedagogical/androgogical and a general human courtesy standpoint, about both of which I will also post later.

    Nonetheless, I reiterate the apologies that I have already offered about my ill-conceived and ill-posed OP and retract what I said in it.

    Sincerely,

    Michael
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  2. I explicitly stated that I believed that no aspect of life was intelligently designed.

    mijopaalmc said:
    To answer you directly, articulett: no, I don't believe that any aspect of life was intelligently designed.
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  3. articullet apologized for accusing me of being an intelligent design proponent.

    articulett said:
    Then I apologize. I hope you read the links above so that you can see why others may be quick to judge. I hope you are as offended by the fossil article in the conservative newspaper as I was. Especially in light of the evidence regarding dinosaurs and chickens.
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mijopaalmc said:
Evolution is random because there is more than one possible outcome for each possible set of genes. Selection biases the outcome by making certain sets of genes more likely to survive. Due to the mathematical nature of stochastic sampling, however, a constant environment (i.e., on in which the selection criteria don't change) will produce convergence towards an adaptive optimum.
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So as to not derail the thread where the above quote originally appeared, I'm bringing it over here where it better belongs.

I think that the above quote is pretty reasonable. Anyone disagree? If so, then why?
 
I'd just like to put the "no credible scientist says that evolution is a stochastic/random process" argument to rest now.

There are at least three evolutionary biologist who have spent their time defending evolution who say evolution is a stochastic process:


These sources are the ones in which it is not only stated that evolution is a stochastic process but it is also explained why it is. There are an additional 23 books in Google Books where the phrase "evolution is a stochastic process occurs" stated as a fact without explanation or as a justification for a conclusion.
 
mijopaalmc said:
I'd just like to put the "no credible scientist says that evolution is a stochastic/random process" argument to rest now.
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That argument always struck me as being suspect. Since it is basically a question of whether the cup is half full or half empty, it would be strange if all credible scientists would see the glass in the same way.

It is also questionable if all credible scientists are thinking of how to couch their words so that they are least prone to misunderstanding by creationists.
 
steenkh said:
It would be a pity to let a long thread like this one just die, so perhaps I could try a derail:

The idea about effective replicators has often been mentioned, but I cannot make that fit to the reality that I know: If this was the case, why do so many species replicate so slowly? Many species, like elephants, only have few young in their entire lives, and yet they survive. They should not be considered effective replicators in any sense: there are comparatively few of them compared to, say bacteria, they multiply much slower than bacteria, and seen globally, they have a much lower collective biomass than bacteria.

It seems to me that "effective replicator" is not the right definition for success. I am thinking more along the lines of "effective survivor".

Can anyone point out what I am misunderstanding here?
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How many trillions of cells do you think get passed on with each elephant... how long do elephants live? What if communities of people begat whole communities in one successful "mating"-- an organism is a community of cells that all get replicated together. It's the DNA that builds the best copiers of the DNA--

In any case the original question in this OP was about the non-random aspects of evolution. It is this copying of the best copiers (copies the most DNA) that is emphasized in evolution. You can have lots of small things copying rapidly or much larger things making huge numbers of copies over a longer life time. There are a lot more of the former because it's pretty damn adaptable... but on occasion it works for whole communities of cells we call organisms... even big ones... dinosaurs even... Humans have a high survival rate of offspring but not near as many offspring as most animals... especially smaller ones... but they have a lot fewer survivors. The more copying that goes on-- whether through big or small genomes, the more liklihood there is for a beneficial mutation to appear... that is something that gives descendants an advantage in having their info. copied.

This is the basic premise of the selfish gene... which has nothing to do with human selfishness --and randomness is not the important part of this process-- the process of natural selection.
 
steenkh said:
That argument always struck me as being suspect. Since it is basically a question of whether the cup is half full or half empty, it would be strange if all credible scientists would see the glass in the same way.

It is also questionable if all credible scientists are thinking of how to couch their words so that they are least prone to misunderstanding by creationists.
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Biologists go out of their way to emphasize natural selection--Darwins main gist-- because it is the key to understanding natural selection... and they go out of their way to show how it is not random... and though it gives the appearance of top down design, it's really a bottom up design that comes from the algorithm of an environment exponentially building upon the information passed on by the best copiers.

Consider the internet-- data is like DNA-- Big Data (movies) get copied less than littler data (song lyrics), but a lot more data is transferred for the former at one time.-- The simplicity of cutting and pasting "little bits" makes it spread more widely and more often-- but not as much data is being transferred per copy. Movies are like elephants.
 
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kjkent1 said:
So as to not derail the thread where the above quote originally appeared, I'm bringing it over here where it better belongs.

I think that the above quote is pretty reasonable. Anyone disagree? If so, then why?
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I and most biologists would find it misleading and unclear. Especially in reference to the question in the OP... moreover, it focuses the definition of evolution on the randomness as Behe does... and this is the easy part of evolution to understand and has little to do with Darwin... it's also the part Creationists emphasize above all else to avoid hearing the answer to the question in the OP. Multiple quotes of top biologists including Dawkins have gone out of their way to emphasize that Natural Selection is NOT random and dislike the dishonesty of the emphasis on the randomness because it is used to confuse understanding and make the seeming design seem improbable-- it doesn't convey the real power that builds the design... natural selection... which is why Dawkins says the followin in regards to Behe's continual emphasis on the "randomness"--

What a bizarre thing to say! Leave aside the history: unacquainted with genetics, Darwin set no store by randomness. New variants might arise at random, or they might be acquired characteristics induced by food, for all Darwin knew. Far more important for Darwin was the nonrandom process whereby some survived but others perished. Natural selection is arguably the most momentous idea ever to occur to a human mind, because it — alone as far as we know — explains the elegant illusion of design that pervades the living kingdoms and explains, in passing, us. Whatever else it is, natural selection is not a “modest” idea, nor is descent with modification.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/b...tml?ex=1188532800&en=7046d7698d874cca&ei=5070



If clarity is your goal, and/or you wish to understand how evolution is not random and/or how the seeming design comes about-- you need to have a description that focuses on the way Dawkins says things... not the way Behe says things. Behe's goal is to muddle understanding so that people don't intuit natural selection and most scientists feel that those who boil evolution down to a "random process" don't understand natural selection.

(per talk origins, Dawkins and peer review mentioned earlier-- http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html)
 
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Dawkins disagrees:

You rightly say that random mutation is NOT a good explanation for the evolution of giraffes' necks or, indeed, of anything else! Fortunately, nobody has ever suggested that it IS a good explanation. The correct explanation -- and it is indeed an excellently satisfying one -- is Darwinian natural selection. Darwinian natural selection is emphatically NOT the same thing as random mutation. Although random mutation does play a role in the theory, natural selection itself is the most important ingredient, and natural selection is the exact OPPOSITE of random.

Three of my books, The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, and Climbing Mount Improbable, are devoted to explaining how Darwinian natural selection works, and why it is such a satisfying explanation.



http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/FAQs.shtml

If your goal is to explain evolution, use the words of those who have explained it to millions and not the words of those who don't seem to quite understand it themselves.
 
It seems to me that "effective replicator" is not the right definition for success. I am thinking more along the lines of "effective survivor".
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It doesn't matter if you are more or less effective at producing offspring which reproduce.

It matters that the probable number of reproducing offspring is greater than or equal to one.
 
jimbob said:
It doesn't matter if you are more or less effective at producing offspring which reproduce.

It matters that the probable number of reproducing offspring is greater than or equal to one.
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No... it's DNA that is copied... in part (half in gametes) or in whole... there are ERVs and duplicates and nondisjunction... the more copying that is going on the more potential for a beneficial mutation somewhere in some eventual germ cells-- Huge genomes copy huge amounts of DNA at a time and become factories of DNA copying machines as each cell becomes a replication factory itself. You are confusing the copying of the information with the vector for the information. Things with small amount of information (data) is copied easily and spreads easily (think of cut and past quotes)-- where as huge amounts of data (a movie, isn't likely to be copied as much... but a whole "community" of data is copied in the process-- a much bigger library of code.
A successful replicator from a DNA point of view is DNA that gets any part of itself into future copying machines. (Selfish gene)-- you keep confusing the information with the organism built from the information and you've made this error before. Do you see it?
 
kjkent1 said:
I don't see Moran's position as being creationist. Please expound on your thoughts.
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He sounds like mijo, and mijo sounds like Behe, and Behe sounds like all the other creationists. Draw your own conclusions.


(And yes, mijo is right. I'm making fun of people who have reached the preposterous conclusion that mijo or I or anyone here might be a creationist.)
 
Meadmaker said:
He sounds like mijo, and mijo sounds like Behe, and Behe sounds like all the other creationists. Draw your own conclusions.


(And yes, mijo is right. I'm making fun of people who have reached the preposterous conclusion that mijo or I or anyone here might be a creationist.)
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LOL...now I'm really confused...which is normal.
 
articulett said:
No... it's DNA that is copied... in part (half in gametes) or in whole... there are ERVs and duplicates and nondisjunction... the more copying that is going on the more potential for a beneficial mutation somewhere in some eventual germ cells-- Huge genomes copy huge amounts of DNA at a time and become factories of DNA copying machines as each cell becomes a replication factory itself. You are confusing the copying of the information with the vector for the information. Things with small amount of information (data) is copied easily and spreads easily (think of cut and past quotes)-- where as huge amounts of data (a movie, isn't likely to be copied as much... but a whole "community" of data is copied in the process-- a much bigger library of code.
A successful replicator from a DNA point of view is DNA that gets any part of itself into future copying machines. (Selfish gene)-- you keep confusing the information with the organism built from the information and you've made this error before. Do you see it?
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Your statements (except about my understanding ;) ) are correct, but that doesn't invalidate my point.

Rephrased, I am saying that as long as the template for the self-replicator makes (on average) at least one copy per template that also reproduces, then it will be "successful" and will continue to evolve. There is room for trees and spiders.

Of course there is competition for resuorces, and then the template that manages to produce at at least one replicating copy will still be sucessfully evolving. If this reproducing replicator rate falls below one, then that is when the replicator is "losing".

Can I go back to talking about organisms now?
 
kjkent1 said:
LOL...now I'm really confused...which is normal.
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There's really no reason to be (confused, that is).:)

articulett's main problem is that she seems to think that my statement "evolution is random" is the same as Behe's statement "evolution is random, therefore it can't happen without the guiding hand of God" and, because Behe is an "intelligent design proponent" (which everyone really knows is the current incarnation of a creationist), I, and anyone who defends or agrees with me, must be a creationist.

Meadmaker is just taking it another further (it is a sarcastic jest on his part): anyone whom I cite or who sounds like me is obviously a creationist. :rolleyes:
 
I'm just stirring the pot a little more.

While I don't expect anyone to take this as an authoratative source, I still this is interesting because of what it is and where I found: a calm reasoned discussion of the randomness of evolution on Richard Dawkins' forum. The OP says Basically what I have been saying about how an random process with random inputs (e.g., natural selection working on random mutation) can have ordered results (e.g., adaptive optimization).

Does anyone have comments on this especially in light of the material I posted from Kimura, Bell, and Moran?
 
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