What evidence is there for evolution being non-random?

[jimbob]

Articulett, it isn't the randomness, it is the shape of the probability distribution...

It will probably be a poission distribution.

Changing the shape changes the odds of reproduction.

Dawkins implicitly treats selection as probabilistic "a reproductive benefit of a little as 1/1000" is fixed in "as few as a thousand generations".

That is a probabilistic treatment.

So basically, both terms are misleading. Evolution is a complex process and it would be misleading to generalize it as either random or non-random.

Would that be an appropriate position to take on this issue?

With the caveats above, and in my previous post, I'd agreee. I like stochastic, or probabilistic for the selection process, as that does have a technical definiton, even if articulett doesn't seem to think so.

 

[articulett]

So basically, both terms are misleading. Evolution is a complex process and it would be misleading to generalize it as either random or non-random.

Would that be an appropriate position to take on this issue?

Yes.

It is a two part process--one part in which randomness plays a role, and another part where the randomness is tested in the environment to see if it is successful at copying it itself. The environment "selects" the winners and allows them to replicate exponentially before dying. The winners are not chosen at random and the info. that made them winners is not copied randomly--Winning mutations spread fast and furiously because they can when others could not.

 

[Wings]

That's because nobody but you thinks everything that has any randomness it it can be described as a random process.

How about I go one step further. To state that because something has any randomness in it can describe it as a random process is to committ the Fallacy of Composition. Just because it has a random component does not necessarily make it a random process.

 

[articulett]

Articulett, it isn't the randomness, it is the shape of the probability distribution...

It will probably be a poission distribution.

Changing the shape changes the odds of reproduction.

Dawkins implicitly treats selection as probabilistic "a reproductive benefit of a little as 1/1000" is fixed in "as few as a thousand generations".

That is a probabilistic treatment.



With the caveats above, and in my previous post, I'd agreee. I like stochastic, or probabilistic for the selection process, as that does have a technical definiton, even if articulett doesn't seem to think so.

I don't disagree that it has a technical definition. I'm just saying they are no peer reviewed sources that use those terms as synonyms for random. Moreover, having random components does not make the entire process random. Mijo highlights the probabilistic aspects because to him that means he can call evolution random while ignoring that which brings order to the randomness--natural selection--the de-randomizer--the series of elimination rounds that the environment entails is responsible for all the seeming design we see in the evolution of life--the randomness is not. Changes to genomes happen all the time--every once in a while a winner has got to show up and spread it's winning combination. We never see all the losers from the pool the winner was selected from--only the success in exponential increments of the winners.

 

[jimbob]

Ther earen't any recent peer reviewed articles, because iot long ago passed into the realms of textbooks, down to A-level standard.

My favourite stats book, which is written for biologists, agrees with all the rest...

 

[jimbob]

And mijo is not denying that natural selection is biased, he is just arguin gthat it is a percentage game, and for large enough numbers can be simplified to nonrandom.

 

[articulett]

And mijo is not denying that natural selection is biased, he is just arguin gthat it is a percentage game, and for large enough numbers can be simplified to nonrandom.

No, he's doing semantic gymnastics so he can continue to sum up evolution as random. He may admit that selection is biased, but he says that biased does not mean "non-random" even though it does on the very page he got his vague definition "of or related to a probability distribution" from.

Mijo will not concede that there is anything non-random about evolution. And he uses the term so loosely, that there isn't.

And it's not because we have substandard educations that peer reviewed papers aren't defining random as loosely as you are--it's because it's too vague to do so--to easy to confuse. Nobody of credibility is using or defining random is such a way that it would apply to natural selection as readily as it applies to mutation (which is not truly random by the strictest definition.) Sure you can model it via probabilities. But that wouldn't make any credible scientist conclude that the answer to the OP is "there is none". And yet, Mijo will only conclude that...and knew it from the time he started this post.

Are you saying you would answer the OP by saying "there is no evidence for evolution being non-random"? Are you unclear as to why Ayala et. al. say natural selection is NOT RANDOM? Are you saying it's more informative to say it is with the knowledge that all you are really saying is that it can be described by a probability distribution? If you want to be that vague, I suggest using those words--not random.

 

[Hokulele]

I'll try a little disagrement.

I'd say it is a nonlinear system, but with perturbations from other events weather (which I consider to be random, due to amplification of quantum effects), meteorites, volcanoes, etc...

These perturbations make the system essentially random, as well as nonlinear.

That doesn't mean that we can't model the probabilities.

If you could perform an experiment with eight identical earths all at the stage wehre humanity diverged from chimps (about 8MY ago?) and reran, to seee what would happen, humanity would not evolve, something similar might. In that time, there would be enough true randomness affecting the selection of the "winners" to stop it happening.

Identical starting conditions will not produce identical outcomes.

Sure, I agree with this. Let's take a slightly different approach by looking at examples where something similar has already happened, island biogeography. I cannot predict which plants and animals will colonize a newly created island ecosystem, and I cannot predict what species will be there once colonization is complete. However, I can calculate the rough number of species, which niches will be filled, and which classes will be most likely to fill them. Would you call this new distribution random?

The only direction that evolution has is towards more optimisation for whatever the current environment is. Of course some optimisations are frequent, e.g. eyes and flight. Some are not (social, technological medium sized animals) I can't see any reason why the evolutionary niche that we occupy wasn't around 30 million years ago. It is obviously one that is fairly unlikely to be occupied. (maybe that is the answer to the Fermi paradox)...


We only think we are special because of the weak anthropic principle.

This is where VonNeumann falls down.

And I agree with this as well. However, exceptions do not necessarily prove a rule.

ETA:

Hokulele,

I would argue that over geological timeframes, which species arises is "random". As mass extinction events wipe the slate clean and those which survive are theluck ones. Which mutations prosper partially depends on which other mutations are extant at the time. The environment is not stable then, so is prone to be changed by "random" seed events (like surviving organisms' mutations).

Sure, if you want to examine the current state of earth and how the current situation came to be, luck can be considered a part of this. However, that still doesn't mean that evolution as a system is random. We may not know which species would be likely to survive a catastrophe, but we would be able to make predictions on what is likely to happen moving forward based on knowing which species did survive.

If you wanted to make an argument from absurdity analogy, let's take a look at planetary mechanics. We can calculate things to a fairly accurate extent, but there will always be unforseen perturbations due to the complexity of the system and the possibility of outside influences. Would you say that planetary orbits are random?

 

[VonNeumann]

...
In which case I don't believe you understand the significance of a frame-shift.
...

Can you tell me what you understand to be the significance of frame-shift and contrast that with what you think is my lack of understanding of same?

 

[articulett]

And mijo is not denying that natural selection is biased, he is just arguin gthat it is a percentage game, and for large enough numbers can be simplified to nonrandom.

And you don't need to stick up for him or speak for him...he can speak for himself. He had his question very well answered by numerous people on this forum. He can be thankful for that. Whether I think he is a creationist or not has no bearing on the answer to his question and whether it makes any sense to sum up evolution as random. You might want to spend your energy on understanding how natural selection is non random rather than making excuses for mijo. It's worth understanding.


We expect randomness to play a role in every game...even football and boxing...but we don't pretend the randomness makes the game itself random. We understand that such things are part of the game. The same is true of evolution. The randomness you keep pointing to in the environment is like snow on a football field--it's just part of the game...players don't get to pick the weather and organisms don't get to pick where they are born and what the environment will entail nor what information they have in their genomes. They can only play the hands they have. They will all die--but some will get their info. copied before they die--and that makes all the difference. It muddles things to call this random...it's the same as saying snow on the football field made the winner random...

Really. Nobody looks at random components in a process or game or system and concludes that such randomness makes the whole "whatever" random. But that is what mijo is doing...as are you by shoring up his claims with semantics. Probabilistic is not synonymous with random even if to you and mijo it is.

 

[VonNeumann]

Evolution IS complex

yep

--but the basics are pretty simple.

The basic theory is extremely simple.

 

[aimforthehead]

Mostly, evolution is just "Whatever works continues to live". Seems logical to me.

 

[articulett]

Can you tell me what you understand to be the significance of frame-shift and contrast that with what you think is my lack of understanding of same?

Your anagram example.

The frameshift mutation is more akin to some kid reading all kinds of books backwards and then happening upon a clever or seemingly prophetic phrase. When she pointed it out, human nature would think, wow--the kid is brilliant--or the author must have put that phrase in there on purpose--or it must be a message to me from my intelligent designer... Why? Because humans notice design! Not because design was intended. Humans notice the hits and forget the misses or have no awareness of them. The same is true of the frameshift mutation. It wasn't amazing. There may be all kinds of frame shifts that have all kinds of potentials-- but we don't know unless the frameshift occurs on a place where it can confer an advantage to the organism it occurs in. Frameshifts are happening all the time. We can only see the successes we look for. What you see as incredible is only incredible after the fact. It's like the lottery winner saying "what are the odds I'd win?" after the fact. Well the odds are pretty good that every lottery winner will think something exactly like that...and conclude that it must have been something they said or did that influenced the outcome. That doesn't make it so. You are seeing "design" and amazing coincidence where there is none--only because you can't see the endless failures it took to get that single success. This is akin to thinking a "you are here" sign actually means the sign or sign maker knows where you, personally are! And success in a genome can multiply itself exponentially. Nylonase is really is no more amazing than the fact that we have a nonworking gene that is supposed to make vitamin C in our genome. Random stuff is happening in genomes all the time--we only see the ones that confer a benefit to their possessor or get passed along in genomes which confer an overall benefit. We have no idea the number of "failures" it took to achieve each success.

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. The change in shape of this protein was beneficial in the environment that it found itself in, just like dwarfism would be beneficial in an environment where tall people were more likely to be shot in the head by snipers. It's not amazing Von. It's not superimposed or intended any more than dwarfism is. Sickle cell trait makes some blood cells sickle shaped instead of round...this makes it harder for mosquitoes to drink the blood and pass on malaria. That is not amazing, Von. On some occasions mutations confer benefits to the organism possessing them. Nylonase is one of those cases. You seem to have the delusion that because this "amazing mutation" occurred it must have been planned...as though some intelligent designer is planning for bacteria to be able to digest nylon pond scum some day... That's backwards Von. It just looks amazing because you evolved a brain that sees design even when there isn't any. It's a great skill...helped us humans figure a lot out--but it is prone to errors of the kind you are making.

 

[rittjc]

A creationist will never concede the fact that things can be "designed" from the bottom up... just like the internet... everyone participating is building it--nobody is in charge...and nobody understands it all... That's what life on this planet is doing...And just like hubs beget more connections...and faster spreading of info.-- replication of DNA beget more and better replicators. It just makes so much sense once you intuit this that an intelligent designer seems superfluous. That is why creationists do every kind of semantic goal post moving possible--anything to keep themselves and others from understanding the simplicity of the actual explanation. The cruelty and waste and deformities make sense...the seeming intricacy of design with the look of being cobbled together and tweaked through time... you understand that you aren't a wretched anything born in sin... just someone who came to be in a long line of successful replications...someone lucky enough to live in a time when you could understand this and share the info. with others and learn more about what DNA is telling us without any intension on it's part. We may have been "an accident"--but most life is unplanned...we don't have a choice about being born or dying. And we most certainly did not arrive here randomly--but through a long chain of successful replications, the majority of which we share with other life forms on this planet.

That's baseless accusation. Building up implies a builder. I have yet to see any kind of building go up spontaneously. Evolution is back to the thinking of the middle ages in "Spontaneous Generation". They have merely adjusted the time base to an exaggeratedly long time to make sure it cannot be disproved. But they forgot to prove it even happens. Seeing a building and conjecturing that it was due to some bugs that just ate a forest correctly is not a rational claim. To rebuff such ideas as that but to accept that complex life forms could do it is even more foolish. Their is some kind of perception of an evolutionist that a reproductive system aids in the improbability but the opposite is true. The change into the ability to reproduce, sexually, asexually, etc, is a mammoth task equal if not exceeding the creation of the organism itself because it must replicate the preexisting complexity.

Design is not random but very precise. The mechanisms are quite complex. There are errors in the process that happen on random occurrences but that does in no way mean the design itself is not precise as it appears to be.

Extrinsic factors seem to be the only explanation for defects. There is no reason or basis to think the creature is inducing defects intrinsically in order to change. That is the mere speculation of evolution. Speculation is not these evidences the evolutionists think they give. They are not objective because they take the blind faith of the observer and the fact the observer must disregard physical and probabilistic considerations.

How an evolutionist sees that as evidence, is well beyond me and why I think it is a personal choice to be religious that way just as a Christian might be religious in his or her way. If we are not discussing religion then there are no assumptions allowed. Predicating a theory on top of another theory as evolutionists do, moves you further away from common sense and things that qualify as sound scientific method. The fact is no evolutionist can demonstrate evolution (as a creative process) happening. Change happens destructively, take Natural Selection for example, but it is a "destructive" process and how can a destructive process be an explanation for variation? It is conceptually flawed, not just lacking all evidence.

 

[articulett]

Mostly, evolution is just "Whatever works continues to live". Seems logical to me.

Yep...but more so...whatever works begets more copies of whatever works and more chances at making a beneficial mutation for its descendants. Good copiers produce more copiers exponentially and more potentially beneficial mutations for descendants as well.

 

[articulett]

How about I go one step further. To state that because something has any randomness in it can describe it as a random process is to committ the Fallacy of Composition. Just because it has a random component does not necessarily make it a random process.

Yes. That's great. One bad apple doesn't spoil the whole bunch...
A touch of randomness does not make the whole thing random.

 

[articulett]

rttjc...mountains don't have builders...

Humans evolved to see design where the is none and to see the world as being made to bring forth them... but any creature could think the same. All creatures fit the niche they evolved to fit. As hard on your ego as it is, the universe was not created with you in mind and no outside overlord gives a rats ass about what you believe. On the positive side, you still have a chance to learn the information that humans for the first time in history have the chance to know. And you don't need to believe it for it to be true...it is whether you believe it or not. All you need is a little bit of education and then you can assess the evidence for yourself instead of repeating diatribes of known creationists and pretending you came up with your silly arguments on your own.

Suppose your beliefs were wrong and evolution WAS right? Would you want to even know? And if so, how do you imagine that information would be conveyed to you and by whom. If creationists are right I imagine they will have evidence that others can measure and replicate, but so far they all have different creation stories and not a single bit of evidence to support any of their claims.

To me, you just seem to be spending a lot of energy keeping a meme virus alive--energy that you could spend learning useful stuff. But hey, if it makes you feel special and holier than thou, knock yourself out. You are a fabulous example of why Dawkins et. al. go out of their way to show how natural selection is "not random" as far as I'm concerned. You are like one of those wacky young earth creationists that even the "intelligent design" crowd doesn't want associated with them.

Anyhow...did you know that Behe concedes that humans and apes share a common ancestor? So do most Christians around the world, actually--including Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian and director of the Human Genome project. So you can learn about evolution without being afraid of hell, you know... and your god can fight his own battles, dear--he's omnipotent, isn't he?

Oh, and that "common sense" you refer too--it was a title of a book by Thomas Paine--an atheist, don't you know.

In any case, "common sense" is what people used and concluded the earth was flat for eons. Your omniscient invisible overlord didn't clue anyone into the fact that it was otherwise in any of his holy books.

 

[rittjc]

There's that word "almost" again.

What do you suppose happens to the few that aren't?

I have to say almost because I can't prove all do. That's not practical.

Ok, lets say they are. I will be generous and say 1 in 1000 are beneficial.

So then we have to also factor in how many didn't mutate in that same generation. I will be generous there too and say 1 in 1000 mutate for the simplicity.

So we theorize that of the .01% that have the random change 99.99% die. Of those that survive, .01% must mutate for another change. Remember, you need trillions of changes to get the job done.

So I will be generous again and say that spontaneously the primordial soup produces 100 trillion.

1st Gen: 100 trillion - 1 trillion mutate - 100 million beneficial
2nd Gen: 100 million - 1 million mutate - 100,000 beneficial
3nd Gen: 100,000 - 1000 mutate - 10 beneficial
4th Gen: 10 - 1 mutates - .01 beneficial
5th Gen: .01 - .0001 mutate - .000001 beneficial
6th Gen: .000001 - .00000001 mutate .0000000001 beneficial

So you can see that starting with the first 100 trillion (a huge friggen number more than the molecules in the soup?) have effectively disappeared by the 4th generation.

If you need trillions of generations you are exponentially screwed.

But the improbabilities issue is not the main one I want to point out. I want to point out the destructive nature of mutations and even throwing you "a bone" of allowing huge numbers, the numbers decay exponentially and makes a terrible module of change.

Time is not the only problem. Materials are also the problem. The Solar System doesn't have that kind of material, how could you take even begin to use evolution. You would constantly run out of material.

There is no doubt that things need a creation, regardless of your view of how it happens. Evolution tries to use Natural Selection as its creative "evidence". How can a destructive process fit the conceptual role of a creative one? So the evolutionist cannot use Natural Selection to explain the progression from soup to man. The belief was that if you could throw in millions of years that somehow the unseen would happen. But the problem is that time does not work to the benefit of Natural Selection, it works against it beginning at the soup and continuing to man who we assume as evolution's crowning achievement.

 

[Wings]

In my opinion, it would seem to me that the reason why scientists say that evolution is "non-random" is not because non-random is any better a term objectively, but because saying it is "random" conveys the imagery of the 747 in the junkyard example.

Calling evolution non-random is meant to emphasis the natural selection portion of evolution. This does not mean that either term completely accurately describes evolution, but non-random is better for the intent that the scientists wish to convey which is that it is non-random in the sense that there is natural selection.

At the very least, I've been reading talk origins and that seems to be the impression I am getting from it.

 

[rittjc]

In my opinion, it would seem to me that the reason why scientists say that evolution is "non-random" is not because non-random is any better a term objectively, but because saying it is "random" conveys the imagery of the 747 in the junkyard example.

Calling evolution non-random is meant to emphasis the natural selection portion of evolution. This does not mean that either term completely accurately describes evolution, but non-random is better for the intent that the scientists wish to convey which is that it is non-random in the sense that there is natural selection.

At the very least, I've been reading talk origins and that seems to be the impression I am getting from it.

Splitting words is the art form of the evolutionist. Its sort of like hearing Bill Clinton's perjury testimony saying "it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is".

We will redefine what random is so we can switch back and forth with it to keep us from being pinned in. Why so many philosophical tangents in explaining evolution? Ever wonder?