The HP Way

This is hilarious. I make the plausible argument that evolution has resulted in DNA using sophisticated meta-mechanisms that themselves drive evolution more efficiently than random base-pair mutation. And you counter with the argument that I can't understand abstraction!

As I said, as soon as evolution is mentioned, you can hear brains switching into low-power standby mode in all directions.

John

I didn't see that, but keep to the original opinion.

Who cares? I don't. Usenet is a relaxation, not a life. I can't be arsed to make personal judgements about the regulars in s.e.d, preferring instead to clock those who make interesting technical posts.

I give up, at least for this thread - there is just no point in going on here. Sometimes when we discuss this topic, I feel we make some progress in understanding each others' viewpoints, but I think we are at a dead-end here.

mvh.,

David

To be more precise, the mutations are still random, but the distribution is heavily skewed.

David

To be a lot more precise, the mutations are entirely random, but the breeders are selecting which mutations are preserved and allowed to breed to produce the next generation.

This is artificial selection, and Darwin had this idea firmly in mind when he talked about "natural selection" where the environment selects which of the mutation bearers (if any) survive to breed and produce offspring in the next generation.

Nobody demands that non-random mutations be impossible - it is just that nobody has yet postulated a plausible mechanism.

We do now do have some idea how we might make non-random changes in DNA, but our level of understanding about what our DNA does - in terms of having useful effects on the body or mind, as opposed to messing them up - is woefully inadequate to the task.

You can do as much handwaving as your like, but we wouldn't know enough to recognise such a mechanism in action, even if we could demonstrate that it existed, which hasn't happened yet, despite the enthusiasm of the religiously indoctinated to find something like that to validate Bishop Paley's watchmaker.

The real answer is that there doesn't seem to be enough cerebral material on show to make any kind of splash if it were spilled.

The big innovation was culture - the transmission of information from generation to generation by a non-genetic route. Now that we have discoverd that DNA exists, and are beginning to have some minimal idea of what the information in it means, we've got the - highly theoretical opportunity to fidlle with the genetic information that we pass on to the next generation.

When you think that the information in the DNA is comparable to the rules in Conway;s "Game of Life" and the phenome is comparable to glider factories, you can get a vague feel for the distance we've got left to go.

Working non-random mutations requires an extraordinary amount of stored data, and I've got my doubts that there is enough room in the junk DNA to accomodate it, even if a hyper-clever algorithm could mindlessly map the necessary information onto the junk DNA.

The odds are that what we seem to be getting is not a late-coming macromechanism, but the first and simplest possilbe macromechanism - in the same way that the Queen Mary was the smallest possible ship that could cross the Atlantic in four days.

Nobody has postulated a plausible way that DNA can define the structure of a foot, either. Does it therefore logically follow that nobody should propose such mechanisms, excuse me, handwave?

Surely DNA can do better for itself than sit there passively, letting cosmic rays tear it up. It does.

Now we get to the botttom line: don't dare suggest that Neo-Darwinism isn't all there is, or everyone will know that you're some sort of religious nut. And don't use an opamp as a comparator.

John

Of course you give up. From your perspective, refusing to consider ideas is winning.

What's interesting is that I've tried this experiment many times here, suggesting that DNA *must* have evolved better evolutionary mechanisms than random base-pair damage. And lots of people have argued against the concept. But *not one* person has chosen, even conditionally, to riff on the idea. And this in a "design" newsgroup!

Let's rename it alt.copy.same.old.circuits.

John

Thank you. Orthodoxy is restored, the damage quickly papered over. Move along now, nothing to see here.

Darwin, incidentally, didn't believe in random mutation. That's from the neo-Darwinian dogma of the early 20th century.

John

ROTFLMAO!

...Jim Thompson

Well, you and I are laughing all the way to the bank.

John

The way that DNA defines the structure of the foot is understood, at least in broad outline - it's all about the genes setting up chemical concentration gradients in the developing tissue, and other genes reacting to the local concentration by setting up their own gradient. The reactions involved have to be second order in order to be able to produce periodic structures, so it is rather like setting up the rules of Conway's "Game of Life" as a mechanism for making glider guns.

Understanding what is going on well enough to be able to manipulate the result in any positive way does seem to be a long way off.

It has, and we are probably going to be that better way.

Prove it.

You misunderstand. All I was saying that there are a lot of highly motivated people out there looking for counter examples, and there have been since Darwin first went public. They've come up empty after more than a century of trying - neo-Darwinism may not be all that there is, but the alternative explanations don't seem to be able to come up with supporting evidence.

And you are welcome to use an op amp as a comparator, because you do understand exactly how badly an op amp performs when used as a comparator. Many people are less sophisticated, and need the heads-up.

Darwin didn't have a clue where the variation was coming from, and it was a major weakness of the theory, as originally proposed. Mendel discovered genes at about the right time to have dealt with Darwin's doubts, but it took about fifty years before Morgan discovered Mendel and added genes to the Darwinian scheme, and another fifty years before Watson and Crick suggested how DNA might encode the genetic information.

That IS the point!

What an astonishing statement! Compiler compilers were implemented on vacuum-tube computers, and DNA defines trivialities like the structure of your ear, but DNA has insufficient storage capacity to encode advanced algorithms?

Or are you saying that humans (who can't begin to understand how DNA actually functions) are the only entities smart enough to direct non-random evolution?

John

Evolution directed by Free Will is indistinguishable, from the POV of the typical intellect-centric consciousness, from random evolution. ;-)

Cheers! Rich