Re: Sean's away; let's play

hersheyh wrote:
On Jul 18, 9:38 am, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Since Sean Pitman seems to have wandered off, I've been thinking about
his last round of posting, and I at least have come to an important
conclusion: all his arguments are irrelevant to what matters most to him.

Let's suppose we grant his thesis, that it's impossible to evolve a
protein system with a novel function at the complexity level of 1000
fairly specified residues (and never mind what that means) through
mutation and selection. So what? Can anyone name such a system that
humans have and chimps don't? Or that humans have and rats don't? Is any
such system necessary to account for any feature of the evolution of
mammals? Or tetrapods? Or vertebrates? How far down the (supposed)
phylogenetic tree from us do you have to go before you encounter the
first novel function at yadda yadda? It seems likely to me that, under
Sean's criteria, it's entirely possible for all animals to be a single
"kind". And doesn't that make his arguments pretty much moot?

I think, although Sean will never admit it publicly, that he actually
believes that *every* biochemical system of *every* size in chimps and
humans was separately designed and separately created specifically for
that (species? kind?) organism by magical poofing (all by the same
three-for-the-price-of-one invisible fairy) about 6000 ybp. And that
magical poofing event included all of the sequence differences in
proteins from different species that perform the same function, which
differences actually are *functionally* important in Sean's unstated
"real" model.

Not quite. Sean has agreed that a few things have evolved from others, though he seldom nails this down. He does agree, for example, that nylonase evolved from a different protein.

Though he clearly does think that humans were separately created, his only justification for separate creation has been his "ID-only" hypothesis. If it's shown that his ID-only hypothesis doesn't apply to human evolution, his justification goes away. Just another nail in a coffin already so fully of nails that it's hard to find a clear spot to hammer in a new one.

His focus on 1000 aa "minimum threshold size" is merely because he
thinks it is the only (albeit hypothetical) target in which his word
salad has not already been disproven.

That he cannot actually calculate the number he knows he really needs
(the smallest available gap size in mutational steps) is why he keeps
presenting the 1000 aa number as if that were of any use, hand-waving
more relevant numbers into existence, pretending that his vision of
sequence space has some reality, or pretending that a measure of
sequence specificity from Yockey's work measures something relevant to
all proteins. It is pathetic.

Agreed.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Seans away; lets play
    ... protein system with a novel function at the complexity level of 1000 ... Or that humans have and rats don't? ... first novel function at yadda yadda? ... specified" amino acids to all be in the same protein. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Seans away; lets play
    ... protein system with a novel function at the complexity level of 1000 ... Or that humans have and rats don't? ... first novel function at yadda yadda? ... specified" amino acids to all be in the same protein. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Seans away; lets play
    ... protein system with a novel function at the complexity level of 1000 ... Or that humans have and rats don't? ... magical poofing event included all of the sequence differences in ... all proteins. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Seans away; lets play
    ... protein system with a novel function at the complexity level of 1000 ... Or that humans have and rats don't? ... magical poofing event included all of the sequence differences in ... all proteins. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Seans away; lets play
    ... protein system with a novel function at the complexity level of 1000 ... Or that humans have and rats don't? ... magical poofing event included all of the sequence differences in ... all proteins. ...
    (talk.origins)