DNA animation

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 9 May 2019 21:36:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 09/05/19 21:31, whit3rd wrote:
On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 11:14:27 AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 16:28:43 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Why would a designer equip us with such a botched design having already
got it right in cephalopods? We have a blind spot where the nerve bundle
enters the eye. They do not. Ours is a considerably worse design.

Why would variation and selection result in an extraordinally complex
and optically inferior eye, when squid had a better one already?

In the absence of a creator, who would communicate the 'better design'
to the distant outposts of life? Squid only communicate their
design to their offspring.

Many of John's points and questions indicate he can't
get past the concept that a creator isn't necessary.

Many of the counter-arguments are clearly from people whose reasoning
is warped by needing to stay far away from facts that even suggest, or
give support to, creationism. So they stick with primordial soup.

Maybe if he read "The Blind Watchmaker", but I doubt it.

I'll get that and read it.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 09/05/19 22:34, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 9 May 2019 21:05:23 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 09/05/19 20:36, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 19:23:47 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 09/05/19 16:24, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 08 May 2019 21:49:14 -0400, Joseph Gwinn
joegwinn@comcast.net> wrote:

On May 8, 2019, John Larkin wrote
(in article<cto5depv30g3gh1dd4i6vm40e1m5cq5kta@4ax.com&gt:

On Wed, 08 May 2019 09:44:21 -0400, Joseph Gwinn
joegwinn@comcast.net> wrote:

On May 8, 2019, John Larkin wrote
(in article<k9m4de93eokbg9gh91ekedg0vsu06kg34q@4ax.com&gt:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpHaxzroYxg

This is insane. This is impossible.

Yes, but that is how it works. It took some billions of years for all that
organized complexity to evolve, one trick at a time.

But it couldn't evolve one bit at a time. If it doesn't all work, none
of it works. And it builds every bit of itself.

Sure it can. Very slowly, with lots of mistakes made and then erased. Not an
efficient process at all. But it does not need to be.

But each incremental step must be an improvement or it won't be
selected.

Not quite.

Incremental steps that are worse become deselected.

Not the same thing at all.

Sounds equivalent to me.

Really? Wow.

I wonder how you interpret and infer what data
sheets /aren't/ saying.

On second thoughts, it is probably best that you
don't write software.

I've maybe done a few hundred K lines of code by now. Lots of realtime
systems, instruments, two compilers, three pre-emptive RTOSs.

I wrote one RTOS while staying with a girlfriend in Juneau. I wrote a
few pages on paper each day and mailed them back to the factory.
People there typed it and assembled it. It had one bug.

I don't program a lot these days; coding is boring. The kids here do a
lot of c and Python and VHDL and I mostly do product ideas and
architectures and hardware design.

This is SED. Electronic design.



So how did we evolve such bad eyes?




DNA is useless without a complex machinery to support and use and copy
it; see the video. But DNA is programmed to build all those support
things. How could that happen? Where did the programming come from?

DNA is not "programmed"; there is no "programmer".

Of course it's programmed. It systhesizes specific proteins and
structures. And viruses.

So a grain of sand is programmed to form piles with a
half-angle of 35 degrees?

Or maybe you are using the word "programmed" in a way
that is unfamiliar to me.

DNA has long sequences of base pairs that direct the synthesis of
complex molecules, and physical structures in people, and then more
DNA itself. I consider those sets of instructions to be programs, with
instruction sets, that are executed by cellular machinery. I don't
know who the authors are, but people are now learning how to edit
those programs.

s/program/recipe/ or s/program/instruction/ and I'll
be happier.

"Program" implies "programmer", and that's creationism
using different terminology.

People are indeed learning how to edit the recipe and
create recipes from scratch.

The program instructions specify the construction of the machines that
execute the programs. That's life, I guess. [1]

The instructions do that, and it is life (which has
multiple definitions )

I kind of hope that someone left copyright notices.

I guess you object to calling these sequences of base pair
instructions "programs" because you are afraid that might sound like
creationism. I suspect that fear of the c-word prevents all sorts of
things from being discovered. Actually, that effect has been
documented.

I'm not afraid of it sounding like creationism.

I am afraid of the ignorance associated with creationism,
and of some of the social policies promoted by those that
espouse creationism.

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 9 May 2019 19:36:39 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 09/05/19 19:14, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 16:28:43 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 09/05/2019 15:37, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 09:07:01 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 08/05/2019 17:53, John Larkin wrote:

[snip]

I wonder how that could evolve by random processes.

You start out with a spot that is light sensitive and gradually evolve
under competitive pressure. Every tiny incremental improvement makes
survival of the owner more likely (all other things being equal),
neutral things make no difference and defects tend to get you killed.

People seem to forget that incremental improvements stack up
exponentially so that 100 1% improvements gets you to 270%.

Why would incremental evolution go through a large number of
iterations to produce a "terrible design" human eye? Each step would

It isn't terrible but it is nothing like well designed. It is just about
good enough for the purpose of keeping a hominid omnivore alive.

Not every change is for the better either but the ones that are get to
survive and reproduce combining in different ways with each successive
generation. How hard is that to understand?

Humans have done it to domestic dogs and livestock pretty much since we
stopped being hunter gatherers. Playing god with the traits we
considered most desirable in them and selective breeding. The selection
pressure being what we consider useful/pretty rather than predation.

make it worse, and the final, immensely complex, result would be a
competitive disadvantage.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482309/figure/retinal_degeneration.F18/

Oh wow! A pretty picture taken out of context. How interesting!

Why would a designer equip us with such a botched design having already
got it right in cephalopods? We have a blind spot where the nerve bundle
enters the eye. They do not. Ours is a considerably worse design.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye


It is pretty much the difference between a bog standard cheap and nasty
webcam design and a thinned rear window astronomical CCD camera.

Why would variation and selection result in an extraordinally complex
and optically inferior eye, when squid had a better one already?

Oh, come on John: /think/ before you post! Speculate a little

The answer to that really isn't difficult.

The best answer is that our eyes aren't actually inferior, given what
we use them for. There's no other species on the planet that can
out-hunt a human with a gun and some insect repellant.

The "human eyes are badly designed" position is used as an argument
against an all-wise Creator. That's dumb, to let an emotional position
interfere with reasoning.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 9 May 2019 13:09:53 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 7:12:53 AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 01:56:25 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, May 8, 2019 at 8:09:39 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

Yup, most gene correlation studies are wrong.

Meaning, what?

Statistically invalid. Cherry picked for publication. Not
reproducible. Faked.

Most statistics are valid, but not necessarily easily understood.

That's true. Given enough even random data, and an open mind about
expectations, one can tease out small p-value correlations and
publish.

Most publishers ARE picky, but a 'wrong' conclusion cannot be
reached on that basis in any meaningful way. The publishers
that are NOT picky, you just have to notice that they're supported
by advertisements for whoopie-cushions and X-ray glasses.

Or by page fees and paid access.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 5:12:05 PM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

On 09/05/2019 16:24, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 08 May 2019 21:49:14 -0400, Joseph Gwinn
joegwinn@comcast.net> wrote:

On May 8, 2019, John Larkin wrote
(in article<cto5depv30g3gh1dd4i6vm40e1m5cq5kta@4ax.com&gt:

On Wed, 08 May 2019 09:44:21 -0400, Joseph Gwinn
joegwinn@comcast.net> wrote:

On May 8, 2019, John Larkin wrote
(in article<k9m4de93eokbg9gh91ekedg0vsu06kg34q@4ax.com&gt:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpHaxzroYxg

This is insane. This is impossible.

Yes, but that is how it works. It took some billions of years for all that
organized complexity to evolve, one trick at a time.

But it couldn't evolve one bit at a time. If it doesn't all work, none
of it works. And it builds every bit of itself.

Sure it can. Very slowly, with lots of mistakes made and then erased. Not an
efficient process at all. But it does not need to be.

But each incremental step must be an improvement or it won't be
selected. So how can evolution build an immensely complex system,
where all the pieces have to be working before any of it it can work
(and reproduce itself) ?

No. It doesn't. You are putting arbitrary constraints on what evolution
can and cannot do. Evolution has explored many weird dead ends as well.

Sorry, your ideas aren't in line with reality. While any given trait or even species can die out, when it formed and spread through a population it provided an advantage or at least offered no substantial liability. While a trait can spread through a population over time even without being of much benefit, if it is a liability it will be selected out.

It basically spans the space of life forms and if there is a niche with
no competition eventually something will evolve to exploit it.

Another assumption on your part. There is nothing to say all niches will be populated. The basic increment of evolution is random changes. Since they are indeed random that does not mean all will be explored. There is also the fact that for many significant features multiple traits had to develop before they became significant. So while waiting for one change to develop and spread through a population another change may die out.

A change that is beneficial, neutral or only slightly detrimental to
individual survival can persist. Sickle cell anaemia is one such example
- not optimum for the individual but it confers some immunity to deadly
malaria not found in those of us with more normal blood cells.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20450-how-sickle-cell-carriers-fend-off-malaria/

This does not prove your point. Where malaria is prevalent sickle cells provide a benefit and so are established in the population. They are spread more widely only recently since man's other evolutionary changes have made transportation widespread. Give it a few thousand generations and it most likely will be selected out.

The requirement for a novel trait to establish in the population is for
the first person with that novel feature to survive and reproduce (and
for their offspring to be fertile).

And likewise for most subsequent carriers of that trait.

DNA is useless without a complex machinery to support and use and copy
it; see the video. But DNA is programmed to build all those support
things. How could that happen? Where did the programming come from?

It must have all been done in SuperBasic ;-)

I don't know why Larson has such limited vision. Why he can't understand that it all didn't need to be in place at once which is basically the watchmaker's fallacy.

--

Rick C.

+--- Get a 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+--- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 5:55:06 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 9 May 2019 19:36:39 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 09/05/19 19:14, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 16:28:43 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 09/05/2019 15:37, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 09:07:01 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 08/05/2019 17:53, John Larkin wrote:

[snip]

I wonder how that could evolve by random processes.

You start out with a spot that is light sensitive and gradually evolve
under competitive pressure. Every tiny incremental improvement makes
survival of the owner more likely (all other things being equal),
neutral things make no difference and defects tend to get you killed.

People seem to forget that incremental improvements stack up
exponentially so that 100 1% improvements gets you to 270%.

Why would incremental evolution go through a large number of
iterations to produce a "terrible design" human eye? Each step would

It isn't terrible but it is nothing like well designed. It is just about
good enough for the purpose of keeping a hominid omnivore alive.

Not every change is for the better either but the ones that are get to
survive and reproduce combining in different ways with each successive
generation. How hard is that to understand?

Humans have done it to domestic dogs and livestock pretty much since we
stopped being hunter gatherers. Playing god with the traits we
considered most desirable in them and selective breeding. The selection
pressure being what we consider useful/pretty rather than predation.

make it worse, and the final, immensely complex, result would be a
competitive disadvantage.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482309/figure/retinal_degeneration.F18/

Oh wow! A pretty picture taken out of context. How interesting!

Why would a designer equip us with such a botched design having already
got it right in cephalopods? We have a blind spot where the nerve bundle
enters the eye. They do not. Ours is a considerably worse design.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye


It is pretty much the difference between a bog standard cheap and nasty
webcam design and a thinned rear window astronomical CCD camera.

Why would variation and selection result in an extraordinally complex
and optically inferior eye, when squid had a better one already?

Oh, come on John: /think/ before you post! Speculate a little

The answer to that really isn't difficult.

The best answer is that our eyes aren't actually inferior, given what
we use them for. There's no other species on the planet that can
out-hunt a human with a gun and some insect repellant.

Sure is. Next time there's an Ebola outbreak we'll send you in to fight it. How does that sound, bwana?

The "human eyes are badly designed" position is used as an argument
against an all-wise Creator. That's dumb, to let an emotional position
interfere with reasoning.

How does it support creationism???

--

Rick C.

+--+ Get a 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+--+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 9 May 2019 22:55:04 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 09/05/19 22:34, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 21:05:23 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 09/05/19 20:36, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 19:23:47 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 09/05/19 16:24, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 08 May 2019 21:49:14 -0400, Joseph Gwinn
joegwinn@comcast.net> wrote:

On May 8, 2019, John Larkin wrote
(in article<cto5depv30g3gh1dd4i6vm40e1m5cq5kta@4ax.com&gt:

On Wed, 08 May 2019 09:44:21 -0400, Joseph Gwinn
joegwinn@comcast.net> wrote:

On May 8, 2019, John Larkin wrote
(in article<k9m4de93eokbg9gh91ekedg0vsu06kg34q@4ax.com&gt:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpHaxzroYxg

This is insane. This is impossible.

Yes, but that is how it works. It took some billions of years for all that
organized complexity to evolve, one trick at a time.

But it couldn't evolve one bit at a time. If it doesn't all work, none
of it works. And it builds every bit of itself.

Sure it can. Very slowly, with lots of mistakes made and then erased. Not an
efficient process at all. But it does not need to be.

But each incremental step must be an improvement or it won't be
selected.

Not quite.

Incremental steps that are worse become deselected.

Not the same thing at all.

Sounds equivalent to me.

Really? Wow.

I wonder how you interpret and infer what data
sheets /aren't/ saying.

On second thoughts, it is probably best that you
don't write software.

I've maybe done a few hundred K lines of code by now. Lots of realtime
systems, instruments, two compilers, three pre-emptive RTOSs.

I wrote one RTOS while staying with a girlfriend in Juneau. I wrote a
few pages on paper each day and mailed them back to the factory.
People there typed it and assembled it. It had one bug.

I don't program a lot these days; coding is boring. The kids here do a
lot of c and Python and VHDL and I mostly do product ideas and
architectures and hardware design.

This is SED. Electronic design.



So how did we evolve such bad eyes?




DNA is useless without a complex machinery to support and use and copy
it; see the video. But DNA is programmed to build all those support
things. How could that happen? Where did the programming come from?

DNA is not "programmed"; there is no "programmer".

Of course it's programmed. It systhesizes specific proteins and
structures. And viruses.

So a grain of sand is programmed to form piles with a
half-angle of 35 degrees?

Or maybe you are using the word "programmed" in a way
that is unfamiliar to me.

DNA has long sequences of base pairs that direct the synthesis of
complex molecules, and physical structures in people, and then more
DNA itself. I consider those sets of instructions to be programs, with
instruction sets, that are executed by cellular machinery. I don't
know who the authors are, but people are now learning how to edit
those programs.

s/program/recipe/ or s/program/instruction/ and I'll
be happier.

"Program" implies "programmer", and that's creationism
using different terminology.

That's your fear, getting anywhere near creationism. Fear creates
avoidance, and avoidance creates blind spots.

People are indeed learning how to edit the recipe and
create recipes from scratch.


The program instructions specify the construction of the machines that
execute the programs. That's life, I guess. [1]

The instructions do that, and it is life (which has
multiple definitions )



I kind of hope that someone left copyright notices.

I guess you object to calling these sequences of base pair
instructions "programs" because you are afraid that might sound like
creationism. I suspect that fear of the c-word prevents all sorts of
things from being discovered. Actually, that effect has been
documented.

I'm not afraid of it sounding like creationism.

I am afraid of the ignorance associated with creationism,
and of some of the social policies promoted by those that
espouse creationism.

That's no reason to look away from possibilities past primordial soup.

Fear disables thought.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 09/05/19 23:06, Rick C wrote:
> While a trait can spread through a population over time even without being of much benefit, if it is a liability it will be selected out.

Yes, but "benefit" is not necessarily what we would expect.

The canonical examples are the peacock and the birds of
paradise in Papua New Guinea.

Their extravagant tail feathers are a significant liability
that make them an easier target for preditors. That is more
than compensated for by their attractiveness to females and
hence increased change of reproduction.

The selfish gene gains the benefit of the dangerous feathers,
even if the individual bird doesn't.

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 5:58:40 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 9 May 2019 21:36:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

Many of John's points and questions indicate he can't
get past the concept that a creator isn't necessary.

Many of the counter-arguments are clearly from people whose reasoning
is warped by needing to stay far away from facts that even suggest, or
give support to, creationism. So they stick with primordial soup.

Just to be clear, you are saying there is no valid argument against a creator, that all such arguments are just biased reasoning???

I've literally never seen a single fact that offered any proof of a creator.. When I've pointed this out to people who believe in a creator they always fall back on some argument along the lines of you can't disprove a creator and when you look at their definition of a creator, that turns out to be true, because the idea is constructed in a way it can't be disproven.

So let's do this. Tell us what test you would apply that would prove or disprove the existence of a creator? It doesn't have to be possible to do today, but has to be allowed by the laws of physics and potentially doable someday. Otherwise this is all just mental masturbation.

--

Rick C.

+-+- Get a 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+-+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 09/05/19 22:58, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 9 May 2019 21:36:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 09/05/19 21:31, whit3rd wrote:
On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 11:14:27 AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 16:28:43 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Why would a designer equip us with such a botched design having already
got it right in cephalopods? We have a blind spot where the nerve bundle
enters the eye. They do not. Ours is a considerably worse design.

Why would variation and selection result in an extraordinally complex
and optically inferior eye, when squid had a better one already?

In the absence of a creator, who would communicate the 'better design'
to the distant outposts of life? Squid only communicate their
design to their offspring.

Many of John's points and questions indicate he can't
get past the concept that a creator isn't necessary.

Many of the counter-arguments are clearly from people whose reasoning
is warped by needing to stay far away from facts that even suggest, or
give support to, creationism. So they stick with primordial soup.


Maybe if he read "The Blind Watchmaker", but I doubt it.


I'll get that and read it.

Please do.

Take the time to appreciate the beautiful prose and
the subtle arguments presented. The author avoids some
of the histrionics that pervade some of his later books.
Try to avoid distractions like the internet

It was written a long time ago, and I haven't re-read
it recently. Many of the arguments presented are
inevitably framed in terms used when written, e.g. the
term "intelligent design" hadn't been invented. But that
doesn't matter, since the term ID was largely created
as a response to the effectiveness of the arguments in
The Blind Watchmaker.

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 6:15:41 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 09/05/19 23:06, Rick C wrote:
While a trait can spread through a population over time even without being of much benefit, if it is a liability it will be selected out.

Yes, but "benefit" is not necessarily what we would expect.

The canonical examples are the peacock and the birds of
paradise in Papua New Guinea.

Their extravagant tail feathers are a significant liability
that make them an easier target for preditors. That is more
than compensated for by their attractiveness to females and
hence increased change of reproduction.

The selfish gene gains the benefit of the dangerous feathers,
even if the individual bird doesn't.

Again you have disproven your own idea. You point out there is a disadvantage to peacock feathers, but then also state the advantage.

What you fail to mention is that the feathers are not just decoration. The fact that the bird can exist with such plumage (as well as other birds and even other species) signals they are a *capable* individual and as such good breeding stock. THAT is the reason why the FEMALES have adapted to prefer their mates with such bright plumage.

--

Rick C.

+-++ Get a 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+-++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[John Robertson]

On 2019/05/09 3:22 p.m., Tom Gardner wrote:

On 09/05/19 22:58, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 21:36:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 09/05/19 21:31, whit3rd wrote:
On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 11:14:27 AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 16:28:43 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Why would a designer equip us with such a botched design having
already
got it right in cephalopods? We have a blind spot where the nerve
bundle
enters the eye. They do not. Ours is a considerably worse design.

Why would variation and selection result in an extraordinally complex
and optically inferior eye, when squid had a better one already?

In the absence of a creator, who would communicate the 'better design'
to the distant outposts of life?   Squid only communicate their
design to their offspring.

Many of John's points and questions indicate he can't
get past the concept that a creator isn't necessary.

Many of the counter-arguments are clearly from people whose reasoning
is warped by needing to stay far away from facts that even suggest, or
give support to, creationism. So they stick with primordial soup.


Maybe if he read "The Blind Watchmaker", but I doubt it.


I'll get that and read it.

Please do.

Take the time to appreciate the beautiful prose and
the subtle arguments presented. The author avoids some
of the histrionics that pervade some of his later books.
Try to avoid distractions like the internet

It was written a long time ago, and I haven't re-read
it recently. Many of the arguments presented are
inevitably framed in terms used when written, e.g. the
term "intelligent design" hadn't been invented. But that
doesn't matter, since the term ID was largely created
as a response to the effectiveness of the arguments in
The Blind Watchmaker.

I consider the evidence of and for a creator to be lacking as well.

All this being had to do was make living creatures with impossible to
explain parts.

In other words real irreproducable magic.

Instead we have DNA, RNA, etc. and other organic compounds with an
understanding of how they work in development. Why would a creator be so
subtle? If the creator wants worship/etc why be hiding her skills like
someone who wants to hide his tax returns?

Everything is linked together with elements that have a path of
understanding from their origins as simple hydrogen via the stellar
furnaces which connect us all together via the stardust we are made of.

Of course hydrogen and the universe are a bit hard to explain, but why
does postulating a creator make it any easier?

Its turtles all the way down.

John

 

[Neon John]

On Wed, 8 May 2019 01:04:50 -0500, "Tim Williams"
<tiwill@seventransistorlabs.com> wrote:

What's insane is people still think this stuff was created in the snap of
some magic finger.

OT to SED, of course, but when this discussion arises, either here or
in real life, I wonder. Why is it that the atheist is the only one to
cram that belief into everyone else's faces?

It's as if he has some sort of compulsion to offend.

He has to know that in the US, maybe 3/4 of the population will
instantly hate him and a significant portion of those left will lose
interest in associating with him in the future.

Nowhere else in the universe is the saying "Better to be thought a
fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt" been more apropos.

Just curious.
John

Note: my question indicates nothing about my beliefs.
John DeArmond
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.tnduction.com
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
See website for email address

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 10/05/19 00:15, Neon John wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2019 01:04:50 -0500, "Tim Williams"
tiwill@seventransistorlabs.com> wrote:

What's insane is people still think this stuff was created in the snap of
some magic finger.

OT to SED, of course, but when this discussion arises, either here or
in real life, I wonder. Why is it that the atheist is the only one to
cram that belief into everyone else's faces?

Clearly you skipped history classes, both modern
history and older history.

No atheist has killed someone who believed in any
of the Gods. Theists regularly do that.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 10/05/19 00:15, Neon John wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2019 01:04:50 -0500, "Tim Williams"
tiwill@seventransistorlabs.com> wrote:

What's insane is people still think this stuff was created in the snap of
some magic finger.

OT to SED, of course, but when this discussion arises, either here or
in real life, I wonder. Why is it that the atheist is the only one to
cram that belief into everyone else's faces?

Clearly you skipped history classes, both modern
history and older history.

No atheist has killed someone who believed in any
of the Gods. Theists regularly do that to other
non-approved theists and atheists.

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 10/5/19 2:42 am, Martin Brown wrote:

On 09/05/2019 15:42, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 12:31:11 AM UTC-4, Jasen Betts wrote:
On 2019-05-08, John Larkin <jjlarkin@highland_snip_technology.com
wrote:
On Wed, 8 May 2019 16:54:08 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
There is still a lot of hand waving. As in
"it is fruitful to consider the alternative possibility that RNA was
preceded by some other replicating, evolving molecule, just as DNA and
proteins were preceded by RNA."

Its entirely reasonable to try and find the simplest possible canonical
thing that can be said to meet the minimum requirements for "life".

Life is a quine (a program that outputs itself), but a special kind of
quine; it also outputs the machine that runs the program. The name for
this kind of quine is simply "life".

In Conway's "Life", a two-dimensional field where each cell contains
either 0 or 1, and in each new generation, the content of each cell is
determined by its direct adjacency. The rules give rise to "gliders"
made of groups of four 1's that move infinitely through empty (0) space.

A more complex structure of a type which was long thought to be
impossible, called a "glider gun". This is a structure that periodically
emits gliders, and continues forever unless its damaged.

So far, we have not yet found a "glider gun gun" that emits copies of
itself, but it is definitely possible, since it has been shown possible
to construct a universal Turing machine - which is capable of computing
any computable function; including one that emits itself.

<https://www.ics.uci.edu/~welling/teaching/271fall09/Turing-Machine-Life.pdf>
There are videos of such things on Youtube also.

Within the world of Conway's Life, such a structure would be "living"
because it reproduces itself completely. The machine that implements the
"rules of the game" is analogous to particle physics in the real world,
so it's ambient, it doesn't need to be emitted by the living structure.

but the RNA for that is found in retroviruses so it could be argued that
it's not "life", weasel words that pomoters of that claim may cling
to.
Really?  There are people who claim viruses are not life?  I don't
know what they think viruses are then.
They can only reproduce by hijacking the cellular apparatus of a
suitable host. They sit in the DMZ between life and non-life.

Virii are quines, but not life, because they don't emit the machine
required to run their program.

Perhaps we'll find something like a virus, but whose operation is
essential to the life cycle of its host. That would not be "life", but
merely a part of a "living" organism.

Clifford Heath

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 10/5/19 8:56 am, John Robertson wrote:

On 2019/05/09 3:22 p.m., Tom Gardner wrote:
On 09/05/19 22:58, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 21:36:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 09/05/19 21:31, whit3rd wrote:
On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 11:14:27 AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 16:28:43 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Why would a designer equip us with such a botched design having
already
got it right in cephalopods? We have a blind spot where the nerve
bundle
enters the eye. They do not. Ours is a considerably worse design.

Why would variation and selection result in an extraordinally complex
and optically inferior eye, when squid had a better one already?

In the absence of a creator, who would communicate the 'better design'
to the distant outposts of life?   Squid only communicate their
design to their offspring.

Many of John's points and questions indicate he can't
get past the concept that a creator isn't necessary.

Many of the counter-arguments are clearly from people whose reasoning
is warped by needing to stay far away from facts that even suggest, or
give support to, creationism. So they stick with primordial soup.


Maybe if he read "The Blind Watchmaker", but I doubt it.


I'll get that and read it.

Please do.

Take the time to appreciate the beautiful prose and
the subtle arguments presented. The author avoids some
of the histrionics that pervade some of his later books.
Try to avoid distractions like the internet

It was written a long time ago, and I haven't re-read
it recently. Many of the arguments presented are
inevitably framed in terms used when written, e.g. the
term "intelligent design" hadn't been invented. But that
doesn't matter, since the term ID was largely created
as a response to the effectiveness of the arguments in
The Blind Watchmaker.

I consider the evidence of and for a creator to be lacking as well.

All this being had to do was make living creatures with impossible to
explain parts.

In other words real irreproducable magic.

Instead we have DNA, RNA, etc. and other organic compounds with an
understanding of how they work in development. Why would a creator be so
subtle? If the creator wants worship/etc why be hiding her skills like
someone who wants to hide his tax returns?

Everything is linked together with elements that have a path of
understanding from their origins as simple hydrogen via the stellar
furnaces which connect us all together via the stardust we are made of.

Of course hydrogen and the universe are a bit hard to explain, but why
does postulating a creator make it any easier?

Its turtles all the way down.

Ahh, well, because faith! ... which relies on the absence of proof.
In other words, god is deliberately hiding.

If that sounds like nonsense, that's because it is.

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 10/5/19 4:14 am, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 9 May 2019 16:28:43 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 09/05/2019 15:37, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 09:07:01 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 08/05/2019 17:53, John Larkin wrote:

[snip]

I wonder how that could evolve by random processes.

You start out with a spot that is light sensitive and gradually evolve
under competitive pressure. Every tiny incremental improvement makes
survival of the owner more likely (all other things being equal),
neutral things make no difference and defects tend to get you killed.

People seem to forget that incremental improvements stack up
exponentially so that 100 1% improvements gets you to 270%.

Why would incremental evolution go through a large number of
iterations to produce a "terrible design" human eye? Each step would

It isn't terrible but it is nothing like well designed. It is just about
good enough for the purpose of keeping a hominid omnivore alive.

Not every change is for the better either but the ones that are get to
survive and reproduce combining in different ways with each successive
generation. How hard is that to understand?

Humans have done it to domestic dogs and livestock pretty much since we
stopped being hunter gatherers. Playing god with the traits we
considered most desirable in them and selective breeding. The selection
pressure being what we consider useful/pretty rather than predation.

make it worse, and the final, immensely complex, result would be a
competitive disadvantage.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482309/figure/retinal_degeneration.F18/

Oh wow! A pretty picture taken out of context. How interesting!

Why would a designer equip us with such a botched design having already
got it right in cephalopods? We have a blind spot where the nerve bundle
enters the eye. They do not. Ours is a considerably worse design.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye


It is pretty much the difference between a bog standard cheap and nasty
webcam design and a thinned rear window astronomical CCD camera.

Why would variation and selection result in an extraordinally complex
and optically inferior eye, when squid had a better one already?

Local maxima, of course, with too big a jump to get to a higher maxima.

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 10/5/19 3:54 am, Martin Brown wrote:

On 09/05/2019 17:00, Tim Williams wrote:
"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote in message
news:hfi8ded0igs8l5e2ipidus433l19ra5mr4@4ax.com...
Most evolutionary algorithms seek a pre-defined goal, and have metrics
for measuring progress along the way. This is intelligent design for
sure.

Critters don't quite work that way.

In the absence of a pre-defined goal, the implicit goal is survival.

Survival and reproduction. Unless the individual with the novel feature
survives to reproduce then the trait is lost to subsequent generations.

This has been reproduced time and time again, even with extremely
simple computational models (cellular automata where each cell runs
its code, interacts with its neighbors, and reproduces under natural
selection conditions).  After thousands of generations, some "species"
seems to take over; then after a while with no change, random
mutations accumulate to cause another tipping point and speciation
occurs.

It's really quite obvious.  If a thing ceases to exist, it ceases to
exist. It can only continue to persist if it persists.  In the
presence of competition, we call this natural selection.

What was stunning was how quickly even relatively trivial genomes would
converge on the right solution for their environment (or they all died).
I did program one or two such simulations used in teaching genetics long
before virtual fruit fly. Hercules graphics card which dates it.

Start with random genomes. Starve them for a while and they evolve to
sweep maximum area for food then add a Garden of Eden where the living
is easy and some quickly evolve to loop around inside it.

Zap the garden of Eden again and they either adapt or expire.

You get boom and bust behaviour and catastrophic losses when they
overwhelm the capacity of the Garden of Eden to provide for them too.

It was astonishing how such a simple model had such complex behaviour.

A highly recommended read: "How Dogs Work" by Raymond Coppinger.
<https://www.amazon.com.au/How-Dogs-Work-Raymond-Coppinger/dp/022612813X>

The "pack" behaviour of a hunting dog pack - circling, moving in, etc,
is all defined by few rules of stunning simplicity... and this is true
of almost all the behaviour observed in working dogs.

Your point is well-made: simple rules can yield phenomenal complexity.

Clifford Heath

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 10/5/19 3:16 am, Martin Brown wrote:

On 09/05/2019 16:04, Rick C wrote:
What four way branch does quantum mechanics provide?
I'm struggling to find an explanation that isn't far too mathematical
but this is the best I have been able to find in a quick search.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/164155/what-is-the-difference-between-a-bit-and-a-qubit

I'm not up with the quantum maths, but would like to report the claims
of my ex brother-in-law Les Green (who tragically died quite recently in
a house fire!). He spent much of his adult life exploring a
reformulation of first-order logic from George Spencer-Brown, published
in the "Laws of Form" in 1969.

GSB left a dangling clue that (reportedly) Bertrand Russel was glad to
learn of, saying that it resolved the well-known paradox that had
triggered his 35 years of work on the Theory of Types. GSB merely
pointed out that the logical value of the statement "this statement is
false" is self-referential in the same way that "x^2 = -1" is; he
suggested rewriting it as "x = -1/x"; a self-referential expression. The
implication is that there is a third truth value beyond True and False,
which we might name Paradoxical; analogous to sqrt(-1) being a new kind
of number.

Les Green realised that there is a fourth value: Undecidable. A
statement of the general form "this statement is true" is true if it is
true, but false if it is false, and it's not possible to know which it
is a priori.

He named the two extra values Para and Meta, and used the symbols Z and S.

Using these four values (0, 1, Z, S) he constructed a twos-complement
arithmetic (with infinities and infinitesimals), and showed various
rather amazing things, like sqrt(2) = 1.z', e = z0, pi = s0. I don't
have the maths chops to reproduce these results, but he also claimed
that the resultant arithmetic behaved exactly like quantum math.

If anyone can reconstruct this mathematics, I'd like to know about it.
It seems kinda... significant.

Clifford Heath.