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Science Disproves Evolution

It's called the Left-Hand Wall rule, and while it does argue that the most complex organisms will typically become more complex over time, it certainly does not argue that the average complexity should increase, or that any individual line will become more complex.

The first caveat is where most people fail. They assume that "complexity increases over time" means that complexity as a whole, or on average, or something, increases. That's certainly not the case. While the Left-Hand Wall leads to a small increase in average whatever-value-is-being-looked-at, the thing about this model is that the overwhelming majority of entities remain very low on that scale. You get a population that's so right-skewed that it's not a bell curve, but an arc. In fact, that may be the best way to visualize this: Take a pen and paper, and draw a graph. X is "complexity", Y is "number of species". At T=0 (when life arose) X=1 and Y=100%. At T=2, maximum X=2, at X=1 Y=99%, and at X=2 Y=1%. At T=100 maximum X=95 or so, and at X=1 Y=85% or so.

These numbers are coming out of thin air, but it'll give you enough to get the idea--the vastly overwhelming majority of creatures stay near the Left-Hand Wall, and only a few break out into the rally high values.
 
Dinwar said:
It's called the Left-Hand Wall rule, and while it does argue that the most complex organisms will typically become more complex over time, it certainly does not argue that the average complexity should increase, or that any individual line will become more complex.

The first caveat is where most people fail. They assume that "complexity increases over time" means that complexity as a whole, or on average, or something, increases. That's certainly not the case. While the Left-Hand Wall leads to a small increase in average whatever-value-is-being-looked-at, the thing about this model is that the overwhelming majority of entities remain very low on that scale. You get a population that's so right-skewed that it's not a bell curve, but an arc. In fact, that may be the best way to visualize this: Take a pen and paper, and draw a graph. X is "complexity", Y is "number of species". At T=0 (when life arose) X=1 and Y=100%. At T=2, maximum X=2, at X=1 Y=99%, and at X=2 Y=1%. At T=100 maximum X=95 or so, and at X=1 Y=85% or so.

These numbers are coming out of thin air, but it'll give you enough to get the idea--the vastly overwhelming majority of creatures stay near the Left-Hand Wall, and only a few break out into the rally high values.
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Now work out the average complexity at T=1 and T=2 and tell us whether average complexity has increased.
 
That's not the real question, though. Of course it likely increased (not necessarily, but likely; this IS statistics, after all). However, between T=1 and T=100 there will be little increase in the average complexity. Between T-90 and T=100 there may be no significant increase in complexity. Again, while the most complex beings are likely to become more complex over time, this in no way argues that 1) the most complex being of any one time will become more complex over time, or 2) complexity as a whole significantly increases over long periods of time.

"Complexity", of course, is a stand-in for any parameter that follows the Left-Hand Wall Rule.
 
Dinwar said:
That's not the real question, though. Of course it likely increased (not necessarily, but likely; this IS statistics, after all). However, between T=1 and T=100 there will be little increase in the average complexity. Between T-90 and T=100 there may be no significant increase in complexity. Again, while the most complex beings are likely to become more complex over time, this in no way argues that 1) the most complex being of any one time will become more complex over time, or 2) complexity as a whole significantly increases over long periods of time.

"Complexity", of course, is a stand-in for any parameter that follows the Left-Hand Wall Rule.
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Hmmm, I wasn't clear.

I meant that, if one singled out the most complex organism at any given time, then the complexity of the most complex individual increases from T=1 to T=100 (with some statistical variation). Is that better?

Main reason is just what you're saying; they can't get less complex than a single cell and still be organisms (arguably), so the only way to go is up. Likewise, there will tend to be opportunities for more complex lifeforms that are "easier" to exploit than trying to take over niches that are already held by firmly established organisms of the same complexity level. This leads to the apparent trend upwards in complexity.

The Mode (if I have my functions right) has always been, and will likely always be, a single-celled bacteria. The mean has to have trended upward slightly, as 1 billion single-celled organisms have less average complexity than 200 billion single-celled and one multi-celled (just like 1 billion 1's has a lower average than 200 billion 1's plus a 2). The upper bound, though...the right hand wall, to use your terminology, is not bound (generally speaking) and so is open to keep getting pushed out by new organisms (which is statistically the most likely).

I don't think anyone is arguing that evolution necessarily leads to more complexity (well, not anyone who's familiar with it, anyway), but that greater, hmm, examples of complexity (maybe a better term?) will develop.
 
Why isn't it the real question?
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Because it's an oversimplification of a fairly complex idea. The increase in mean complexity at the time when the increase is, in all probability, the fastest doesn't paint a very clear picture about how evolution works through time--the fossil record doesn't deal with T=1 and T=2, but rather T=2 to T-3.9 billion, roughly. Also, the majority of the interesting stuff that happens due to the Left-Hand Wall Rule is over time, meaning that looking at any two time slices doesn't tell you mcuh. Looking at 50 or so is better. Looking at all of them is best.

Think of it this way: If you had 1 billion Loonies, and someone threw a $2 coin into the pile, would you say that the average value of the coins just increased? A $2 coin divided by 1,000,000,001 coins is going to be miniscule. Statistically, we can say that it is insignificant. Similarly, the increases in mean complexity in a population may numerically increase, but if it's not statistically significant it's irrelevant.

Also, mean only really works with normal distributions. For something this skewed, while the mean can be useful in determining other traits of the population, it's not a very useful trait of the population in and of itself. In that way, it's kinda like asking where the flour that went into your hamburger bun grew--useful data in one sense, but if you're looking at the burger in terms of food it's almost entirely irrelevant.
 
All this talk about average complexity might hold given fairly stable environmental conditions. What happens if a big meteorite collides with Earth? I'd say in that case the more complex an organism, the more likely for it to be in some serious trouble. If not for other reasons, then surely because there are usually much less of them.
 
Depends on your definition of "complexity". That's another problem with this whole question--there's pretty much no way to measure it. For example, are lobsters as complex as humans, more complex, or less? Not individual organ systems, but as a whole. Are mammals more complex than lizards? How about fish?

If a big rock hit the Earth it'd be better to be a small, cosmopolitan omnivore than nearly anything else--but small crabs survived, as did small rodents and small lizards and small dinosaurs.

As for the numbers, the number of TAXA that are highly complex will be less, yes. But the number of INDIVIDUALS? That's an open question. There's 4.6 billion of us humans (aproximately). I can find mollusk species with less than 100,000 living representatives. There are bacteria that have been nearly erradicated. Humans would out-live either if a big rock hit us.
 
Dinwar said:
Depends on your definition of "complexity". That's another problem with this whole question--there's pretty much no way to measure it. For example, are lobsters as complex as humans, more complex, or less? Not individual organ systems, but as a whole. Are mammals more complex than lizards? How about fish?
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Yes, there is an inherent complexity in defining complexity... :)

Dinwar said:
If a big rock hit the Earth it'd be better to be a small, cosmopolitan omnivore than nearly anything else--but small crabs survived, as did small rodents and small lizards and small dinosaurs.

As for the numbers, the number of TAXA that are highly complex will be less, yes. But the number of INDIVIDUALS? That's an open question. There's 4.6 billion of us humans (aproximately). I can find mollusk species with less than 100,000 living representatives. There are bacteria that have been nearly erradicated. Humans would out-live either if a big rock hit us.
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That's interesting. Let's be clear, I'm not saying that actually all kinds of simpler lifeforms would survive and all more complex ones would die off. I'm (admittedly) speculating that a disaster of such a magnitude would make for a nice scenario where simpler lifeforms might be better suited for survival.
 
laca said:
Let's be clear, I'm not saying that actually all kinds of simpler lifeforms would survive and all more complex ones would die off. I'm (admittedly) speculating that a disaster of such a magnitude would make for a nice scenario where simpler lifeforms might be better suited for survival.
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I figured as much--it's just that the K/Pg event is something I'm fairly well versed in. :) The end result is that it's really difficult to predict what will survive and what will buy the farm; in the end it depends on local conditions as much as anything else. For example, most reefs disappear at the Cretaceous boundary. Three (one in Austria, one in Italy, and one in Spain) are there in the Paleocene, and only one (the one in Austria) survived through the event. The one survived, at least in part, because fortuitous ocean currents kept the nasty stuff away from it. The rest of the reefs died (at least in part) to being swamped with sediment, dissolved stuff, organics, and other junk.

That's the problem with huge events--they're so big that they're nearly impossible to pin down.
 
Not really. There IS an objective definition of "complexity" up to a certain point--the number of organelles in a cell, for example, or the types of proteins it uses, or how many different types of things it has jammed into its cell membrane. Aceolomates are less complex than ceolomates, because they have fewer tissue layers. Things like that can be objectively measured. And until you get to the point where taxonomy begins to overpower everything and render the concept of complexity difficult, if not impossible, to deal with it's not that hard to discuss complexity. While it's not necessarily true that an organism that arose from non-living matter is as simple as it gets (it's almost certainly true, but I can think of ways where it might not be), it's certainly a good enough starting point for this discussion.

Also, "complexity" is a place-holder for any value you care to name in the discussion about the statistics. For example, the largest animals have gotten bigger over time (probably true of the rest, but I don't know their fossil record that well), but the average animal size is still remarkably small.
 
Dinwar said:
Not really. There IS an objective definition of "complexity" up to a certain point--the number of organelles in a cell, for example, or the types of proteins it uses, or how many different types of things it has jammed into its cell membrane.
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You've just given me a choice of three objective measures. I agree those are objective measures. I disagree that there is a single way to lump those factors in to a single measure of complexity.

Is there a single objective answer to the question: Which is more complex, a single celled organism that can do all the biochemistry necessary to reproduce itself from entirely non living material or a multi celled organism that needs to consume those materials rather than make them itself?
 
I'm sure there could be, I'm just not the person to define it. I threw out three examples as just that--examples of how one might go about defining complexity objectively in organisms. It may be that a number of factors need to be taken into acount (complexity is complex :D ). I'll have to think about this.
 
Cuddles said:
Yes it is. Here's a thought experiment - imagine we have a scale that measures complexity, with 1 being the simplest possible organism and 10 being the most complex possible organism. Assuming there are no pressures acting specifically on complexity, so inherent trend towards either complexity or simplicity, you will end up with a random walk around the scale for each evolutionary path. When life starts with abiogenesis, all organisms are at 1. As the random walks progress, organisms spread out along the scale. After one step, some will be at 1, some at 2. After two steps, some will still be at 1, some at 2, some at 3. Of course, some of those at 1 will be organisms that have become simpler again.

Carrying on doing that a large number of times and you end up with an even spread across the whole scale. It will be a dynamic equilibrium with the complexity of any individual line changing all the time, but with the average complexity of the system remaining constant (assuming a large enough sample). At every point until the steady state is reached, the mean complexity will have increased, even though the complexity for any given line can increase or decrease.

Now, this assumes that there is actually such a thing as "maximum possible complexity". If that's not actually the case, then the steady state will never be reached, and overall complexity will always increase. While I doubt there is a solid limit, things like energy costs and redundancy requirements will likely act to limit increases in complexity, so things should be closer to the limited scale than an open one.

I'm pretty sure this is all Simon39759 is saying. Not that every organism will always become more complex, but simply that if you start off with only the simplest possible cases existing, there will inevitably be an overall trend of increasing complexity, regardless of the trend in any individual case.
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Yes, that is what I was talking about...
As time passes by, we are seeing increasingly complex organisms making their appearance in the fossil record... The further time passes, the more complex the most complex organism will be...
Because, to re-use the metaphor, there is a wall on the left... A certain level of complexity required to perform the most basic tasks of a biological system...
This wall, in fact, as probably shifted a bit on the right through time... There probably is an intermediate level whereas a life form would theoretically be complex enough to perform biological functions but would do so in such an inefficient manner that it would be systematically out-competed by more complex competitors...

Anyway,it is a very vague and general trend, and I certainly did not mean to suggest a rule that'd be observed by every lineage...
It also means nothing about the average complexity of the organisms at any given point. Indeed, the most prominent life form today are still bacteria.

And we are not lacking of example of organisms becoming simpler. I don't necessarily like the example of parasites, because, why they lose some function, they also gain highly specialize trait for their parasitic lifestyle... But among prokaryotes, the mycoplasmas or the Rickettsia are fascinating examples of simplifications...
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
[qote=[B]Pahu posted elsewhere and is probably about to spam it here][/B]
Although mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic variation, it is a relatively rare event,...” Ayala, p. 63.
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Mutation rates have been measured and they are not relatively rare. On the contrary, they are constant, with virtually every act of reproduction producing some mutations.
Here's an article on Ayalya. If he, a religious person, believes what you just quoted why is he still an evolutionist critical of creationism as pseudoscience?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_J._Ayala

-REJ[/quote]

The rate of mutationWP is estimated at ~2.5×10−8 per base per generation for nuclear DNA, and ~3×10−6 or ~2.7×10−5 for mtDNA. In humans that amounts to about 150 mutations per cell per generation. All the mutations are, of course, independent of each other.
 
And variation within the existing genome is part of the process as well, it is not always mutation, sometimes it is variation with the expression of traits.
 
Pahu said:
Glenn R. Morton has a long history of making and repeating fallacious arguments against creationist scientists.

http://www.trueorigin.org/ca_jw_02.asp
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Rubbish. Glenn Morton is an ex-creationist who has published in the _Creation Research Society Quarterly_ and ghost-authored the creation/evolution sections of Josh McDowell's book _Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity_ before becoming persuaded by the evidence--which he was forced to deal with in his profession as a petroleum geologist--that the earth is old and evolution is a correct theory. I've known him to be honest and accurate in his writing.

"John Woodmorappe" (pseudonym for Jan Peczkis), on the other hand, a creationist high school teacher, is not known for being reliable or honest:

http://aigbusted.blogspot.com/2008/01/dishonesty-of-john-woodmorappe.html
 
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