[extropy-chat] Re: intelligent design homework

[Robert Lindauer]

On Aug 8, 2005, at 11:08 AM, ben wrote:

> "A -particular- mule is produced by some mutation.  One animal.  It's
> important that we're clear that -one animal- is required here, not
> millions of years of animals, but ONE ANIMAL that can no longer mate
> with members of its parents' species."
>
> This is not how it works.
> You are quite correct that this scenario is extremely unlikely. This 
> doesn't mean that evolution is incorrect, it means that that's not how 
> evolution works.

Obviously.

>
> After this happens enough times, the population will not be able to 
> interbreed successfully with the starting population, or, more 
> accurately, with the descendants of the starting population that 
> wandered off and stayed more genetically similar to it.


What you're describing is adaptation -within- a species which has not 
been contested seriously by anyone.  What we're trying to get at is 
large-scale adaptations on the order of Rhinoceros-elephant splits 
where the early rhino-fant was split into to two "subspecies" with only 
mildly different genetic profiles.   The elephants got trunks, the 
rhinos got horns, say.  At some point, though, some particular 
rhinofant is no longer able to reproduce with its cousins.  There is 
the -chance- that it may be able to reproduce with its siblings.   The 
problem is not the story up to the point of the rhinofant, the problem 
is with the one that can't do it any more and yet manages to take over 
the world.

That animal's mutation is 1)  reproduction related and 2)  apparently 
somewhat harmful since they can't reproduce with the rest of the 
eligible population.  They consequently have very, very low chances of 
surviving and mating.  That is to say, we are still left with the very, 
very unlikely and experimentally unverified need for a particular mule.

The addition of the complication of "over thousands of generations" 
doesn't do anything to remove the problem of the ONE that can't 
reproduce with the rest of the reproductively eligible population 
around it and yet manages to form the next species against the odds.

> This is not the only way evolution works,

The correct word would be 'might work' since, and this is the real 
problem, nobody really -knows- how it works/worked in the way that say, 
a mechanic knows how to fix a carburetor.

> A million monkeys with a million years. Yes, exactly. Can you see how 
> it's easy for a million monkeys with a million years to turn into a 
> bunch of guys banging rocks together?

Not really.  I can imagine them losing their hair, getting smarter, 
taller and better fed.  I can even imagine them mutating into something 
other.  But that's just my vivid imagination.  My scientific scepticism 
says "Exactly what mechanism would be required for that to happen and 
what evidence is there that such a mechanism existed".  Then I'd start 
looking at the microbiology of genes and realize that gene strands that 
isolate an animal from its potential reproductive partners are harmful 
and then I might start looking elsewhere.  I might also look at the 
fossil record for all the in-between species that we should be finding 
and when I didn't find them there, I might perservere or I might 
thinking about other options.  It depends on how dedicated I was to the 
idea.  On the other hand, if I'd gone and found that creating new 
species of animals was easy and likely to happen all the time and also 
found that in fact, outside the laboratory, there were lots of species 
being created all the time, then I'd be impressed with myself.  Until 
then, I'd use the term "theory" for my pet idea if I were responsible 
and honest.

Again, I have no problem -imagining- the world in which evolution might 
be true.  I just don't think our level of knowledge of the matter is as 
definitive as you apparently do.  This I think because the biology 
books I've read always manage to throw the monkeys and millenia 
argument around as though species were beachfronts being worn by waves. 
   But that kind of analogy breaks down quickly.

>  Because it is. It's very easy.
> And a few billion prokaryotes with a few billion years going spare 
> will turn into giraffes and redwood trees and crocodiles and giant 
> condors.

Sorry, don't see it.  I'm a litteralist,  I need actual historical 
events and mechanisms and evidence that those events and mechanisms are 
real.  Otherwise, they're theories.

> The rats example suffers from the same problem as the mule idea. 
> Massive overkill. Why do you want to irradiate them "enough so that 
> its eggs are a chromosome short"?

Because that's the kind of event that would produce something 
-actually- in a different reproductive group.  E.g something unable to 
reproduce with its cousins but able to reproduce with another thing 
that allows it to carry the gene.  I took the time to read up on the 
liger and tigon.  The females, apparently, are able to reproduce but 
not with other ligers or tigons as the case may be, because the males 
are mules.  Genetically, you can see that the liger or tigon can't ever 
become dominant because as each successive generation moves forth, the 
number of specifically liger/tigon genes are diluted since you need a 
real lion or real tiger to do the daddy work.  And these are with 
animals with a relatively healthy -mutation- one that doesn't kill all 
of them immediately or make them all completely unable to reproduce.

Here's what I'm getting at, which I'm sure you know.  The vast majority 
of mutations produce animals that are not viable - animals unable to 
survive or reproduce because of the handicap of having been -damaged- 
by some mutation.  The likelihood of accidentally producing -good- 
mutations by sheer chance is near nil.  The likelihood of then finding 
another animal with which to reproduce is even less likely as the 
diluted mutation is then poured back into the general gene pool of the 
species in question.   If there are lots of the other kind of animal - 
the competition from the herd is intense and unless the advantage 
caused by the mutation is genuinely staggering, it's not likely to make 
enough of a difference to push the mutated individual's genes forward.  
Put it this way - if a lion can hunt on the savannah successfully, so 
can a cheetah.  If the cheetah is a relative of the lion, the puny 
cheetah pup born from the lioness would be the runt with funny legs, 
but really fast.  If she reproduced -with another lion- her genes would 
be diluted, her children wouldn't necessarily carry her strange 
mutations, and if they did, they have a chance of being recessive.  So 
unless something -really drastic- happens like a lioness has mutant 
cubs that are subsequently isolated from the rest of the den and those 
mutant cubs are able to reproduce successfully with each other, then 
you get nothing.  If on top of that the mutant cubs are unable to 
reproduce with the mother's nephews, they might make a new species.  
But again, what's the likelihood that a mutation that affects one's 
ability to reproduce with the majority of your potential mating 
population is going to be a good one?

Net, net, we're guessing at probabilities.  What's the probability that 
if the Sixers won game 4 that they'd win game 5?  Some people estimate 
it 40/60, others 50/50, there are many methods of calculating 
probabilities that are equally valid.  Unless we back it up with some 
-causal mechanical theory- and some -actual observations- (say, the 
Sixers' average players are 4" taller than the opposing team, are 
faster and have better coaching or something) then our actual state of 
knowledge of the situation is nil.  We don't know, given that the 
Sixers won game 4, what the probability is that they'll win game 5 
-without further evidence.  I say we're in this situation with regard 
to Evolution.  Millions of years ago, the evolutionist tells us, the 
small apes were seperated into two groups somewhere in africa, one 
species lived in arid land, the other tropical.  The arid-land-apes 
developed techniques for survival in their new environment, etc.

Maybe, it's a nice story.  It's certainly not like the documentation we 
have on Hannibal's invasion of Italy.  Instead, it's a nice story.  
What's the likelihood that it happened?   Well, it depends on how you 
calculate odds.  The only reason to say something like "something like 
that must have happened, because we're here!" is that one is already 
committed to the theory.

>  (not that i have a clue how that could actually happen, but i'm going 
> with the spirit of the argument here). What you are saying is "let's 
> irradiate these rats so much that they are dead or sterile or 
> incapable of producing viable offspring. Oh, look, dead rats! So much 
> for evolution, then".

Events severe enough to cause animals not to be able to mate with their 
cousins are typically "evolutionarily deadly" - no kids - , I guess you 
get that already.

> If you want to see evolution at work in rats, expose them to a 
> low-level background radiation (something like that found on the 
> surface of the earth for example), and a selective pressure of some 
> sort (sub-optimal levels of a rat's essential amino acid, or such. I 
> don't know much about rat's dietary requirements, but you get the 
> idea), and see if we get any unusually healthy rats after a while.

Well, we get the ones we have, not unusually healthy, not unusually 
unhealthy, we get the mass of, from the point of view of the 
ever-improving genetic force of mutation and selective force, a really 
rather mediocre gene-pool all around.  If this force is as ubiquitous 
as you say, why don't we have super-rats and super-dogs and super-men?

>
> "Obviously, if it exists, God created it or created the thing that 
> created it, or created the thing that created the thing, etc."
>
> Doh. Just read that.
> OK, sorry to have wasted your (and my) time.
>
> ben
>
> PS One - just one -  question, i can't resist it: What created god, 
> then?

God is a necessary being, not contingent.  Your question is a category 
error like: "what causes there to be a number six?"

R