OT: new book on the results of lots of whole genome testing

t his work could encourage racists, and points out that his work makes nons ense of the ideas of card-carrying racists because the ancestries that his techniques can work out from current and ancient genomes illustrate that we are all mongrels.

out

e significance (though not that one) but there's nothing in it that a racis t could exploit.

d makes it clear that there's a lot more in the pipe-line.

pread farming and the Indo-European source language about 9000 years ago.

ive thosuand years ago from the steppes of central asia, where the Yamnaya people had tamed the horse, and invented the horse drawn waggon and a parti culary productive pastoralist life-style that opened up a lot of previousl y unproductive land for colonisation. They - and their (mongrel)genome - en ded up getting everwhere.

Everyone knows mankind, even in its modern form, were just a bunch of blith ering apes until aliens visited us and imparted just enough intelligence th rough genetic engineering to train us to mine precious metals for them. And then they left.

hat his work could encourage racists, and points out that his work makes no nsense of the ideas of card-carrying racists because the ancestries that hi s techniques can work out from current and ancient genomes illustrate that we are all mongrels.

about a 2% neanderthal genetic component - and some of these differences d o have significance (though not that one) but there's nothing in it that a racist could exploit.

and makes it clear that there's a lot more in the pipe-line.

spread farming and the Indo-European source language about 9000 years ago.

five thosuand years ago from the steppes of central Asia, where the Yamnay a people had tamed the horse, and invented the horse drawn wagon and a part icularly productive pastoralist life-style that opened up a lot of previou sly unproductive land for colonisation. They - and their (mongrel)genome - ended up getting everywhere.

thering apes until aliens visited us and imparted just enough intelligence through genetic engineering to train us to mine precious metals for them. A nd then they left.

Robert Plomin seems to think that what we measure as intelligence correlate s with some tens of thousands of particular single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), none of which has more than a 0.1% effect on "intelligence" and mo st rather less.

Your genetic engineers wouldn't seem to have been particularly intelligent designers.

Reich's book does point out that a few of the SNPs that correlate positivel y with years of education also correlate with having your kids late - and f ewer of them - and do seem to be being selected out. Better education doesn 't seem to do enough for your reproductive success to compensate for fewer kids.

Years of education isn't a great proxy for intelligence, and neither is wha t intelligence tests measure, so it's probably not worth worrying about for a while yet.

I've lately been reading books about the biochemistry of evolution, and they are heavy going. But this one is brilliant:

The author is actually a student of the philisophy of science who got sucked into the origins issue. The problem is not how we descended from apes - Darwin suggested how - but how life and DNA got started in the first place. Where did the apes come from?

Some of the biological mechanisms descrbed here are stunning; my favorite is the RNA polymerase machine.

Suppose you have two slices of pie and a milk shake. Some cells in your stomach or somewhere scream "we need insulin!" A few billion programmed RMAp machines get created; each finds the right chromosone in its pancreas cell, starts at one end, unzips the DNA helix apart, finds the recipe for insulin, copies just that and sends it on to the neighborhood protein factory, and repairs the DNA on its way out. Takes minutes.

Where do the RNA polymerase machines come from? RNA polymerase machines make them.

The video on his home page illustrates some of this.

His big point is that a useful computer system needs hardware and programs. But computer systems and programs were invented by intelligent beings, and computer systems don't reproduce their own hardware and programs.

The DNA guys have a lot of respect for Shannon's information theory. Maybe too much respect.

As a hominid with considerably more than 2% of neanderthal DNA, it's entirely understandable that your reasoning abilities are somewhat hobbled, Bill.

The really big question AFAIC is, did early DNA arise by chance, or was it designed and seeded? I struggle to believe it was a monkeys and typewriters job.

The book has math on that, the probability that a minimal self-reproducing, capable-of-evolving chemical system could emerge out of primordial soup by chance or self-organization of some sort. There are necessary components that would be created with a probability of one part in 10^40000. There are about the equivalent of 10^80 atoms in the universe.

He argues that there have not been enough atoms in the universe, jiggling around since the Big Bang, to come anywhere close to creating minimal life through chance or any other suggested mechanism.

And there probably was no suitable primordial soup on earth.

It's a good book, regardless of your preconceptions. Lots of history and personalities too.

Interesting but not entirely surprising. I've never looked into it, but for any simple molecule (let alone a complex macro-molecule like DNA) to 'self-assemble' requires thermodynamically favourable pathways and a predetermined series of discrete or concerted steps, so given insufficient entropy and/or enthalpy AND no artificial means of making such available to assist as a catalyst (there obviously being no humans around to heat or chill the soup or bombard it with UV or whatever) there is effectively zero chance of the spontaneous formation of such a molecule. So does that means God exists? Probably. But that's not some white bearded dude sitting on a cloud, but rather a team of eminent scientists from another dimension or universe.

It's worse. DNA is useless without an enormous number of supporting structures. Those structures effectively build one another and themselves. But there is the information problem: DNA has to be programmed to manufacture all those other, vital things, and has to be programmed to reproduce itself. The computer needs the program and the program needs the computer. Unprogrammed DNA is impossible to build by chance, and even then programmed or unprogrammed DNA is useless. It would be useless without all the supporting structures already in place. It can't happen.

I can think of at least four scenarios for intelligent design, and only one involves the Big Dude with the beard.

In one case, we are a high school science project.

hat his work could encourage racists, and points out that his work makes no nsense of the ideas of card-carrying racists because the ancestries that hi s techniques can work out from current and ancient genomes illustrate that we are all mongrels.

about

ave significance (though not that one) but there's nothing in it that a rac ist could exploit.

and makes it clear that there's a lot more in the pipe-line.

spread farming and the Indo-European source language about 9000 years ago.

five thosuand years ago from the steppes of central asia, where the Yamnay a people had tamed the horse, and invented the horse drawn waggon and a par ticulary productive pastoralist life-style that opened up a lot of previou sly unproductive land for colonisation. They - and their (mongrel)genome - ended up getting everwhere.

thering apes until aliens visited us and imparted just enough intelligence through genetic engineering to train us to mine precious metals for them. A nd then they left.

Everyone knows they used robots to mine the precious metals. They used hum ans for their sexual pleasures.

Duh!

They are talking about the percentage that is not common to all hominids. T he stuff that makes neanderthals neanderthals. The neanderthals developed separately from the other hominids of the time with very little interaction , but not zero. So there was a bit of DNA swapping from time to time.

PARTY!

We have very little insight into what happened to create a process of self replication. There was some research into the idea that DNA was first patt erned on rocks with some structure that allowed DNA to be strung together f rom nucleotides. I seriously doubt we will ever know... at least until som e new discovery sheds some significant light on the issue.

The key is self replication in some form with potential for mutation. Once that happens, organization into cells is no leap at all. Once cells form it would seem inevitable they would aggregate into higher organisms... or a s microbes would view it... a buffet!

Believing it had to be something other than random chance just because we c an't conceive otherwise, is a bit of a stretch.

I won't challenge that.

Those are two different things, creation of self replicating DNA and creati on of "minimal life".

"Live" can exist in many forms some of which do not require DNA. RNA is no t inherently simpler, but other compounds may have been used. Protein can be reverse translated to RNA and even DNA. So once viable proteins were cr eated it is possible they in turn resulted in RNA and DNA.

We just have too little information to make rational deductions in this are a.

"Intelligent design" is a rather unfortunate term in this context. *I* know what you mean, but it could be drastically misconstrued by followers of Dawkin et al.

Doesn't really matter. The bottom line is we don't know enough about how t he universe started (if that is even a meaningful question about "the unive rse") or about how life began to form any useful theories. Imagining "inte lligent design" doesn't change any of that. I just punts the unknown bits to the other side of a conceptual barrier so that we don't need to think ab out it anymore.

How was the universe/life created? I don't know.

How was the universe/life created? Some intelligence created it.

How was that intelligence created? I don't know.

Yes, that answers so many questions... or I guess it removes the need to as k those questions... I'm just sayin'

Facing a great unknown, I don't want to discount any even radical explanation.

Maybe our carbon organic life structure was designed by some other life form that itself had an easier path to self organization, billions of years ago, just for fun. Maybe they left a copyright notice in our DNA.

Read the "Signature" book. It's good.

There's nothing obviously wrong with Neanderthal DNA, and I've not a got a clue how much I've got - though it's probably much the same 2% as Cursitor Doom.

I've actually coughed up money to get 23 and Me to send me a testing kit

so I may know more later.

Compared with Curstor Doom my reasoning abilities are somewhat hobbled by a respect for logic and a rather larger (and more reliable) data-base.

"Hobbled" probably isn't quite the right word to reflect this kind of restriction - "disciplined" could be better - but "non-gullible" probably captures the essence of my advantage over Cursitor Doom, not that he will be able to see it as an advantage.

Cursitor Doom struggles to understand that Russian Today and the Daily Mail are lying to him. Getting to grips with evolution and the evidence from "less-than intelligent design" is clearly beyond him.

The route that could lead to self-replicating molecules (which clearly started with RNA rather than DNA) hasn't been charted yet.

The argument that since we can't seen how it could work, it couldn't possibly have worked is a trifle dubious.

Probably not. Newton though that the finger of God was required to explain the precession of Mercury. Einstein was able to discard that hypothesis as unnecessary.

Cursitor Doom isn't Isaac Newton, and does seem to have rather more capacity to get things wrong.