Re: Natural selection and favorable traits how were they measured ?

On Jan 31, 9:55 am, noshellswill <noshellsw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:42:24 -0800, chris thompson wrote:
On Jan 30, 11:30 pm, noshellswill <noshellsw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:13:12 -0800, chris thompson wrote:
On Jan 30, 6:20 pm, noshellswill <noshellsw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 08:35:19 -0800, chris thompson wrote:
On Jan 29, 5:20 pm, noshellswill <noshellsw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:41:53 -0800, backspace wrote:
http://www.strangescience.net/evolution.htm
"....In other words, the life forms best suited to their environments
are likely to live the longest and produce the most offspring..."

Other than noting that certain organisms live very long how were their
suitability to the environment measured ?

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/a15f99d...
"... NS is the result of the interaction between a population of
organisms and their environment in nature..."

And no matter what the result Peter would tell us the same story
wouldn't he, making the whole thing unfalsifiable. Note that this
doesn't mean the label NS he has given his unfalsifiable story is
unfalsifiable itself. The label NS is entirely ad-hoc nobody can tell
me what the interaction between the organisms and the environment has
got to do with the term NS.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/science/04edgehed.html?pagewanted=1...
Richard Dawkins
"....I believe, but I cannot prove, that all life, all intelligence,
all creativity and all "design" anywhere in the universe, is the
direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection. It follows
that design comes late in the universe, after a period of Darwinian
evolution. Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot
underlie the universe..."

Notice the difference in views between Peter and Dawkins: Dawkins
believes NS produces something while Peter sees NS as an effect or
result.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/science/04edgehed.html?pagewanted=2...
Nicholas Humphrey
Psychologist, London School of Economics; author,"The Mind Made Flesh"
"...I believe that human consciousness is a conjuring trick, designed
to fool us into thinking we are in the presence of an inexplicable
mystery. Who is the conjuror and why is s/he doing it? The conjuror is
natural selection, and the purpose has been to bolster human self-
confidence and self-importance - so as to increase the value we each
place on our own and others' lives...."

Which means we shouldn't believe a word Humphrey says because he
believes his language is "conjuring trick". The statement itself was
made by his consciousness which means that the statement itself is a
"conjuring trick". These are known as self-defeating statements. Gould
made the same mistake saying that the mind "consists of illusions",
which means that Gould believed his mind consisted of illusions and
thus we should believe a word he said. In addition the statement
itself was an "illusion" because he formulated it with his mind!

What Darwin said about NS:
".....I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if
useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection, in order to mark
its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often
used by Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the Survival of the Fittest, is more
accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient. We have seen that man
by selection can certainly produce great results, and can adapt
organic beings to his own uses, through the accumulation of slight but
useful variations, given to him by the hand of Nature. But Natural
Selection, we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for
action, and is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as
the works of Nature are to those of Art....."

What one notices about this NS business is that NS in and of itself is
invoked as the actual explanation for what we observe. No, NS can only
be the label for the mechanism, the actual process responsible for the
universe and organisms. But what is this process that is labeled NS by
everybody? NS as a word term in and of itself can't be the actual
explanation just like the label "gravity" is not the actual
explanation for what the attraction between bodies are. This needs to
be defined elsewhere and will be independent of the actual label.

The wikipedia opening statement is constructed in such a way that the
truth of the proposition is guaranteed.
Those traits which were favorable became more common. Why? Because the
traits that became more common were favorable guaranteeing the truth
of the proposition and thus it is a tautology. But this doesn't mean
that the label which was arbitrarily associated with the common traits
by some mystery, unknown writer is therefore tautological because we
don't know who wrote the opening paragraph. What has traits becoming
more common got to do with the label NS and who says so? For all we
know somebodies cat could have walked over his keyboard and typed in
the opening paragraph. We need to know who says so because we need to
know if this person agrees that the opening sentence is tautological.

bs:

I fear you will talk yourself silly, before getting a relevant response.
The bio-evol folks do-not-know ... as science understanding knowing ... in
what the "selection" process consists or even on what the process acts.

They talk, and explain, and imagine. But they cannot do the one thing
required to do science. They cannot quantitatively predict outputs from
quantitative inputs ... should they know either which they do not.

nss
******

From: Hedrick, P.W. 1984. Population Biology: The Evolution and
Ecology of Populations. Jones & Bartlett, Boston. p56.

<begin>

Let us examine the viabilities in the experiement in which the moths
were placed on dark backgrounds. The survival of malanics is
58/70=0.83 and that of typicals is 39/70=.56. If these are
standardized into survival relative to that of melanics (because they
have the highest survival) then the relative survival of melanics is
0.83/0.93=1.0, and that of the typicals is 0.56/0.83=0.67. Because
the melanic is dominant the relative fitnesses become 1.0, 1.0, and
0.67 for AA, Aa, and aa respectively, where A and a are the melanic
and typical alleles. Assuming the relative fitness of the aa
individuals is w{aa}=1-s, then the selective disadvantage of aa
individuals is s=1-w{aa} = 1-0.67=0.33

We can use this example to illustrate numerically the expression we
have used for allelic frequency change. Assume that q=0.8 and p=0.2
and that we would like to know how much selection under the conditions
of a dark background would change allelic frequencies [omit reference
to table] The allelic frewquency after selection is:

q' = 1/2(0.406) + 0.544 = 0.747

and

dq = 0.747 - 0.8 = -0.053

Using the expression for allelic change

dq = {0.33(0.2)(0.8)^2} / 1 - (0.33)(0.8)^2

dq = -0/054

The same process can be repeated for any number of generations, and
the pattern of increase is that of progressive selection as shown in
Figure 3.4
<end quote>

Next.

Chris

Chris:

Am I missing something, or have you mapped "trait" frequency directly into
"alleles" frequency? Kinda skipping-a-step, eh? A big step. Many big steps??

You are going to have to be quite a bit more specific about what steps
you think are missing. Is it that you think the melanic/typical
coloration system in the moths is not controlled by a single gene with
two alleles? In fact, that would not surprise me. There are apparently
several genes, for instance, that influence eye color in humans. Their
effect, as the effect of those hypothetical multiple loci in moths, is
negligible. If you have information to the contrary, I await your
presentation, with literature cites, please. A simple "There might be
a problem!" is insufficient.

True, Chem and Physics do that also ... say, mapping time and
acceleration into (new) positions of a moving object. But of-course that
analysis leaves out reference to explicit interactions causing the
movement. We call this "kinematics", or kinetics.
Physical interactions ( dynamics ) are assumed to have been previously
identified and effects calculated calculated. The results of these
calculations are rolled into "dummy" variables ( like "g" ) used in the
kinematics.

What, exactly, is the relation of this to natural selection, please?
You said evolutionary biology could not make quantitative predictions.
You're wrong, and I showed you an example of the ability to make
predictions about allele frequencies changing under selection
pressure. In case you missed it, this has been empirically confirmed
in field and lab. There are hundreds- no, I bet there are thousands of
papers in the literature that describe selection, and make predictions
that were later borne out. Read "The Beak of the Finch" for another
fine example. In addition, the reference I cited above (Hedrick 1984)
provides additional cites for predicting changes under conditions of
drift, nonrandom mating, mutation, and gene flow. And that work is
over 20 years old. You need to catch up on your reading.

Show me the calculation relating a string of DNA base-pairs ( or protein
amino acid string ...) to a macroscopic, measurable "trait", like
moth_color. Use whatever you believe an "allele" physically corresponds to:
if you say it's "wavefunction-like, and the physical ensemble upon
collapse ( selection ) some logically entangled DNA/RNA/protein/H2O system
... as I believe it is ... then I hope your QM is less-rusty than mine.

Q: What's the difference between regular goalposts and creationist
goalposts?
A: Creationist goalposts are the one with the trailer hitches.

You said evolution could not make predictions. I showed you some
simple predictions. Unlike Captain Kirk, when you change the
conditions of the test, you lose.

Additionally, I understand the concept "alleles" is very controversial
within bio-evol.

You understand wrong. Understand this: if that's what you believe,
your understanding is deeply, deeply flawed. Please do not take this
the wrong way. I do not say your understanding is irreparably flawed.
However, to correct this will surely take some work on your part. What
is your training in biology, if I may ask? Are you a biologist?
College courses? How long ago? My suggestion to you would be to go to
a university library and check out _Biology_ by Campbell and Reese
(the 7th ed. is the most recent), and read the evolution chapters and
the genetics chapters (there are several of each). The concept of
alleles is not controversial, in evolution or any other field of
biology.

Unclear which piece(s) of physical material ( or which
metabolic cycle etc. ) to stick your finger in and say ALLELE.

There are often different forms of genes. The most familiar of these
are "dominant" and "recessive". There are other types of interactions,
of course, including but not limited to incomplete dominance and
codominance. The different chunks of DNA that exist at identical loci
are alleles. Please trust me on this. It is not controversial.

Chris

Chris:

Appreciate your response and detailed example. Nice "kinematics".

I don't know what this means.

My
critique of "alleles" as a variable still stands ...

Your critique presented nothing o substance. Your critique consisted
entirely of hand-waving.

I've nothing to
defend, or believe.

No, you don't. Unless, of course, you want your objections to be
meaningful. So far, you have presented nothing at all that can be
addressed.

You must demonstrate "alleles" "downward" quantitative
structure, and may not point at high-level behavioral results to do this.

Well, here's an example of that lack of understanding which I
mentioned earlier. Nowhere did I write anything about behavior. The
fact that you think I was talking about behavior speaks volumes of
your understanding of this basic phenomenon. Please, get that book
and start reading.

Same goalposts. What you're telling me is that you CANNOT do my requested
calculation : from base-pair changes to population change.

Do you understand the analogy? Do you see where you asked for
predictions made by evolutionary biology, and then tacked on
additional requirements? That is moving the goalposts, and you are
guilty of it.

In fact, like all creationists, you will keep moving the goalposts
until you reach a comfortable strawman that is impossible to refute,
then you will bray out your triumph over science. In fact, it's the
triumph of determined ignorance over reality.

Chris

nss
******

Chris:

Quite a mendacious response. If you HAD a scientific refutation to my
"alleles" point it would have sounded something like ...

' ... and change of allele frequency is measured by the differential
fluorescent labeling technique of Xxx&Yyy <cit>...'

Mendacious? I don't think so. And what makes you think the
individual's phenotype is not a good indicator of it's genotype? Do
you have any evidence for that assertion?



But you didn't. Nor did you show the obvious data-plot. Too bad for
readers of this n.g. I've published enough (p.r) papers ( biophysics )
to judge what constitutes persuasive scientific evidence.

But not enough, apparently, to understand some very basic biology.

IMO you have
avoided the crucial issue in a slippery, unscientific way. Trying to
'pass off' a pop-gen calculation as one specific to bio-evol theory does
NOT improve your credibility.

Would you care to indicate where in my post I even implied this was
"specific" (whatever that means in this context) to "bio-evol
theory" (whatever you mean by that)? Do you think population genetics
and evolution are unrelated?

I've debated this very issue with others on this n.g. -- the most
straightforward response has been 'no, the calculation you require cannot
currently be done.' That's fine. The time will come when it will be done,
and bio-evol will have then become a science, able to pose and attack hard
quantitative developmental issues.

And once again you are unable to explain why this quantitative
prediction does not meet your original specifications. In short, it's
because you don't want it to. Keep moving those goalposts.

As for being a "creationist" -- yep I'm a Christian and an Aristotelian;
I find little scientific value in the "ID" concept and have no
practical doubt that life develops by some evolutionary scheme. The
dynamics of that scheme have yet to be expressed, and I would not be
surprised if severe constraints ( read organization ) are placed on
biological development by low-level physical parameters.

More word salad and gobbledygook. Your objections are vague and still
consist of wishful thinking, smoke, and hand-waving.


My advice to budding life scientists lurking this n.g. ... return Fisher
and Gould to the bookcase. Study QM and P.Chem. Discover something
interesting.

Your understanding of evolution and biology is not irreparably flawed
unless you make it that way. You seem to be trying very hard to
succeed at that endeavor.

Chris



nss
*****

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