Absurdity of evolution

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Absurdity of evolution

Post #1

Post by EarthScienceguy »

How is evolution even possible in light of the following?

1. Haldane's Dilemma

The cost of substitution Cs is 30 and it is paid off in installments (Ps)of 0.1 each generation. At that rate, it takes (Cs/Ps) 300 generations to pay the cost of substituting one gene. Haldane's conclusion was over the long term the average rate of gene substitution is no better than one gene every 300 generations. (Crow and Kimura, 1970 p 244-252; Crow 1968 p 168-173; Ewens 1979 p 252-256; Merrell 1981 p 187-193)

In a human-like population with a nominal generation time of 20 years 10 000 000/(20x300) = 1667nucleotides could have been changed. That is 0.000047% of the human genome. For 1% of the human genome to be changed in this fashion would take 210,000,000,000 years.

Haldane's dilemma ended the idea of selection causing evolution.

How is there time for evolution?
How can there be evolution without selection?

2. Kimura's Neutral theory of evolution

Kimura is credited with coming up with the solution to Haldane's dilemma. He suggests that neutral mutations is the way that most of the genome was changed.

Error catastrophe is when harmful mutations accumulate too fast and genetic deterioration becomes unavoidable. The standard genetic model the one model taught in every evolutionary textbook -predicts that error catastrophe occurs when the mutation rate gets much above one harmful mutation per progeny. (that is 0.5 harmful mutations per gamete per generation) At that rate, each progeny typically has one more harmful mutation than its parents. Above this threshold, the species would rapidly accumulate harmful mutations from generation to generation.

Kimura estimates that amino-acid altering mutations are roughly ten times more likely to be definitely harmful than neutral. (kimura 1983, p 199; King and Jukes 1969 p 795) That would indicate that the expressed neutral mutations cannot be more common than 0.05 per gamete per generation.

The neutral theory predicts that the neutral substitution rate is equal to the neutral mutation rate per gamete. (Kimura 1983 p 46-48) Therefore, expressed neutral mutations are substituted no faster than 0.05 per generation. In ten million years, a human-like population could substitute no more than 25000 expressed neutral mutations. That amounts to 0.00007% of the genome. So that means if 1% of the human genome were to change it would 14,000,000,000 it is closer to the age of the universe.

How would evolution have time to occur?

3. Punctuated Equilibria

Punctuated Equilibria was developed in response to seeing cladogenesis in the fossil record and not anagenesis. Punctuated equilibria has three central postulates.

Postulate 1: Most evolution occurs in short, rapid bursts (called punctuation events) followed by stasis. This produces a large morphological gap.

Postulate 2: Most evolution occurs at speciation (in other words, punctuation events are closely tied to speciation)

Postulate 3: Speciation has no inherent directionality. A daughter species tends to originate in a random, non-adaptive direction from the parent species.

Punctuated equilibria destroy the idea of discernable phylogeny in the fossil record. Punctuationists declare that evolution is a labyrinthine bush, not an identifiable tree.

How can evolution be true if phylogeny is not discernable in the fossil record?

Remine, Walter The biotic message
Last edited by EarthScienceguy on Tue Nov 09, 2021 4:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Absurdity of evolution

Post #61

Post by EarthScienceguy »

[Replying to The Barbarian in post #56]
Red hair--a desirable mutation?
Abstract
Red hair is one of the most striking variants of human hair coloration and has historically been of profound social importance. Red hair in man is due to certain loss of function mutations of one of the peptide products of the pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) gene, the melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R, MIM 155555). Such functional mutations enable the melanocyte to produce red-yellow pheomelanin in preference to the default, black-brown eumelanin. This paper reviews the path of discovery of the MC1R in control of animal coat colour, the subsequent role of MC1R in human physiology and possibly wider role of MC1R in human skin carcinogenesis and human development through history.

So what is the driving force of evolution? Polymorphism if polymorphism is a mutation it should be the driving force of evolution because there would be more polymorphism mutations than any other type of mutation.
No, that's wrong. For example, every human has dozens of mutations that are not present in either parent. So there are hundreds of billions of them, none of them with frequencies that would qualify as polymorphisms.
What would it take for everyone in the world to have red hair?

Everyone in the world that does not have red hair would have to die off. And then the population would have to grow again to a point where another mutation can happen. Haldane says that this will take 300 generations. Which does not give enough time for evolution. Thanks for the example.

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Re: Absurdity of evolution

Post #62

Post by Purple Knight »

Difflugia wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 3:32 pm
Purple Knight wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 2:45 pmThe only difficult part of modern animal breeding and fixing traits in your population is the frankly BS insistence from the breeding community that you never inbreed, when not inbreeding (in a pure breed, which admits no new individuals from the random outside population) only delays and exacerbates the problem of bad recessives. So I have to go out and find new cats that are "not related" to my cats (even though they are, it's a pure breed) and buy them or trade for them to appease the foolish notion that not inbreeding is somehow fighting against the problem.
That's an interesting problem. With a small population and artificial selection, I'd think that you'd want to inbreed as much as possible, but be diligent about identifying and tracking carriers of novel deleterious mutations and removing them and offspring from the pool (neutering).
Yep, inbreeding is actually good because you nip the bad stuff in the bud. Religiously avoiding inbreeding where only one shared great-grandparent is allowed only delays and masks the problem until it comes back worse because you didn't nip it in the bud. But the big breeders have got everyone sucking on the inbreeding-is-bad shtick like a honeyed pacifier. You breed parent and kitten and the collective basically kicks you out, declaring you an "irresponsible backyard breeder" and you will not do well when you don't have the same access to the gene pool as others.

They're obsessed with coefficient of inbreeding being as low as possible for absolutely no %$#& &&^%$ reason. Some breeders display the COI of each king and queen on their website like a badge of honour, and declare without objection (because no one dares make one) that therefore, their kittens are healthier.

It. is. a. pure. breed. NEW INDIVIDUALS CANNOT COME INTO THE GENE POOL. I am not being cruel. If 1/4 or 1/2 of a litter have some serious problem or die, I know whose fault it is and I can nip it in the bud. More kittens will ultimately die BECAUSE THEY ARE PASSING THE BUCK.

AAAAAARRRGG!!!!

When I have to deal with this idiocy personally, and it actually affects me so negatively, so immediately, there's a limit to how much I can be upset at religious people whose sometimes irrationally-codified rules are, at the end of the day, designed to benefit the group, not hurt it so a few people can benefit.

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Re: Absurdity of evolution

Post #63

Post by The Barbarian »

EarthScienceguy wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 3:56 pm What would it take for everyone in the world to have red hair?
Fixation.
Everyone in the world that does not have red hair would have to die off. And then the population would have to grow again to a point where another mutation can happen.
How many people do you think it would require for one mutation? Show us the math.
Haldane says that this will take 300 generations.
By definition, a mutation takes one generation. Perhaps you don't know what "mutation" means in genetics. What do you think it means. By now, I don't have any expectation that you'll even attempt to do that, but just for the record.
Which does not give enough time for evolution.
As you learned, evolution happens every generation. This is another example, of you being unfamiliar with the terminology you use.

Thanks for the example.

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Re: Absurdity of evolution

Post #64

Post by The Barbarian »

Purple Knight wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 4:26 pm Yep, inbreeding is actually good because you nip the bad stuff in the bud. Religiously avoiding inbreeding where only one shared great-grandparent is allowed only delays and masks the problem until it comes back worse because you didn't nip it in the bud. But the big breeders have got everyone sucking on the inbreeding-is-bad shtick like a honeyed pacifier. You breed parent and kitten and the collective basically kicks you out, declaring you an "irresponsible backyard breeder" and you will not do well when you don't have the same access to the gene pool as others.

They're obsessed with coefficient of inbreeding being as low as possible for absolutely no %$#& &&^%$ reason. Some breeders display the COI of each king and queen on their website like a badge of honour, and declare without objection (because no one dares make one) that therefore, their kittens are healthier.

It. is. a. pure. breed. NEW INDIVIDUALS CANNOT COME INTO THE GENE POOL. I am not being cruel. If 1/4 or 1/2 of a litter have some serious problem or die, I know whose fault it is and I can nip it in the bud. More kittens will ultimately die BECAUSE THEY ARE PASSING THE BUCK.
The issue is that all of us have numerous harmful recessives. But we mostly don't have the same harmful recessives, so as long as we don't marry cousins or siblings, the chance of two of those recessives showing up in offspring are fairly unlikely. So in humans, who are full of those alleles, inbreeding is a bad idea.

However, there are lots of species, where breeding with siblings is the rule. They do just fine. How can that be? Well, they don't have many harmful recessives. A lot of them died in the process, but at the end, the harmful recessives were bred out of the population, and new ones tend to quickly be eliminated by natural selection. We could do that for humans, if we were indifferent to the death and suffering involved. This is what you seem to be referring to. And you're quite right about it. If you inbreed and ruthlessly remove the unfit, you will bring harmful recessives to a low level. However, mutation will eventually bring them back, without continued inbreeding and culling.

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Re: Absurdity of evolution

Post #65

Post by Purple Knight »

The Barbarian wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 9:42 pmThe issue is that all of us have numerous harmful recessives. But we mostly don't have the same harmful recessives, so as long as we don't marry cousins or siblings, the chance of two of those recessives showing up in offspring are fairly unlikely. So in humans, who are full of those alleles, inbreeding is a bad idea.
We're passing the buck here too, unless we plan on finding humanoid aliens every few hundred years and succeeding in breeding with them. Let's say a brother and sister fall in love and want to get married, and let's say that's allowed. They each think four children is a good, square number (because this makes the math much easier for me).

They carry a bad recessive, causing a serious illness in one of those children. It is seriously debilitating. The child cannot eliminate waste products and is blind and crippled by the time they're 16. This individual is eliminated from the population. What's left are two carriers and one that is completely clean. Two copies of this bad gene made it out to fester in the population.

If instead, these star-crossed lovers decide not to inbreed because it's bad, they each go their separate ways and still think four children is the perfect number. Each breeds with an unaffected, unrelated individual and each one of these lovers produces two carriers and two that are clean. Woohoo, we win, because nobody died right away!!

Except, do you see the problem? Because we didn't have that death that killed off two copies, with the same amount of breeding, four copies of that bad gene made it out to fester in the general population, instead of two.

They just passed the buck, and made it worse for the coming generations where those genes will eventually find one another again.

Now, that's not saying passing the buck can't be the best solution. In this situation it probably is, because we can wait for better technology to identify these genes and make sure we don't get the bad outcome. But you are passing the buck.
The Barbarian wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 9:42 pmIf you inbreed and ruthlessly remove the unfit, you will bring harmful recessives to a low level. However, mutation will eventually bring them back, without continued inbreeding and culling.
It's not so ruthless. The less-than-best just get neutered and go to pet-only homes for a cheaper price. I charge extra for breeding rights, but sometimes make a note about a particular kitten that there is not the option to purchase it intact. Sometimes I have to go by instinct, but I have a very good sense of when an animal is not right. I've had it since I was a small child. I hope the technology arises and becomes affordable enough that we have everyone sequencing their animals, finding out exactly what's wrong with therm, and then perhaps the big-time breeders will relent on their inbreeding-is-always-bad policy.

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Re: Absurdity of evolution

Post #66

Post by The Barbarian »

Purple Knight wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 12:18 am We're passing the buck here too, unless we plan on finding humanoid aliens every few hundred years and succeeding in breeding with them. Let's say a brother and sister fall in love and want to get married, and let's say that's allowed. They each think four children is a good, square number (because this makes the math much easier for me).

They carry a bad recessive, causing a serious illness in one of those children. It is seriously debilitating. The child cannot eliminate waste products and is blind and crippled by the time they're 16. This individual is eliminated from the population. What's left are two carriers and one that is completely clean. Two copies of this bad gene made it out to fester in the population.

If instead, these star-crossed lovers decide not to inbreed because it's bad, they each go their separate ways and still think four children is the perfect number. Each breeds with an unaffected, unrelated individual and each one of these lovers produces two carriers and two that are clean. Woohoo, we win, because nobody died right away!!
Because we think that human life is of value, and we consider every genetic disorder to be a bad thing, we rely on outbreeding to avoid it. Usually that works. But not always. There's still a chance that you'd encounter someone with the same harmful recessive.
Except, do you see the problem? Because we didn't have that death that killed off two copies, with the same amount of breeding, four copies of that bad gene made it out to fester in the general population, instead of two.
Which is why we generally regard human inbreeding with disgust and revulsion. It's evolved that way for a reason. Our strategy (not a conscious one, of course) is the same one that is common in other vertebrate species. But as I mentioned, it's not the only feasible one. Yours also works, albeit with some grief in getting to that stage where harmful recessives are eliminated. That is, it works in a small population where breeding can be controlled. The idea was promoted for humans by the eugenicists, and incorrectly so, because we aren't a small population, and it's not feasible to control breeding. The Darwinian geneticist, Reginald Punnett, showed that in the human population, it would take tens of thousands of years to eliminate most harmful recessives, and that with controlled breeding and sterilization of "defectives." In a small breeding population, it can work, of course. But it's not foolproof, either. Mutations happen. Duchenne muscular dystrophy, for example, is caused by a harmful recessive passed down in families. But it can also happen as a random mutation. This is why inbreeding species have a constant but low number of genetic diseases.
They just passed the buck[/b], and made it worse for the coming generations where those genes will eventually find one another again.
Fortunately, it's rare. Except maybe in some populations where oddly enough, the recessives have been said by some researchers to act to increase intelligence. It's a hot topic right now, for some historically endogamous castes. I'm skeptical.
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... telligence
Now, that's not saying passing the buck can't be the best solution. In this situation it probably is, because we can wait for better technology to identify these genes and make sure we don't get the bad outcome. But you are passing the buck.
The fact that inbreeding avoidance is such a common thing in vertebrates suggests that it's a pretty good strategy. But not the only one.
The Barbarian wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 9:42 pmIf you inbreed and ruthlessly remove the unfit, you will bring harmful recessives to a low level. However, mutation will eventually bring them back, without continued inbreeding and culling.
It's not so ruthless.
From the standpoint of passing on one's genes, it is. And in populations, that's survival. But yes, even eugenicists only advocated sterilizing "defectives." It doesn't have to be cruel or even morally repugnant. For example,most people who find they have a gene for Huntington's Disease, refuse to reproduce, since it's a dominant gene, which manifests itself later in life. What you're doing is neither cruel or morally repugnant.
The less-than-best just get neutered and go to pet-only homes for a cheaper price. I charge extra for breeding rights, but sometimes make a note about a particular kitten that there is not the option to purchase it intact. Sometimes I have to go by instinct, but I have a very good sense of when an animal is not right. I've had it since I was a small child. I hope the technology arises and becomes affordable enough that we have everyone sequencing their animals, finding out exactly what's wrong with therm, and then perhaps the big-time breeders will relent on their inbreeding-is-always-bad policy.
Heterosis (hybrid vigor) is a thing.
https://www.ipic.iastate.edu/publicatio ... dvigor.pdf

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Re: Absurdity of evolution

Post #67

Post by EarthScienceguy »

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #59]
In one generation, if I dose every female with that sperm, all of my new cattle now carry the trait. If I buy the sperm again, in two generations, half will now express the trait and the remaining half will be carriers. Now that I have an expressor bull of my own, probably many, I use those exclusively. Even if I never culled females, in this third generation, 3/4 will be expressors and the remaining 1/4 will be carriers. I can easily now cull 1/4 of the females. This is all assuming the gene is recessive.

There doesn't always have to be extra death, and the amount of death that occurs naturally by predators (simulated by my harvesting my own cattle for meat) is more than enough to accomplish selection.

You are talking to an actual animal breeder. I know my stuff. I have done what you are claiming can't be done, and though you shouldn't just trust me, this is frustrating. The only difficult part of modern animal breeding and fixing traits in your population is the frankly BS insistence from the breeding community that you never inbreed, when not inbreeding (in a pure breed, which admits no new individuals from the random outside population) only delays and exacerbates the problem of bad recessives. So I have to go out and find new cats that are "not related" to my cats (even though they are, it's a pure breed) and buy them or trade for them to appease the foolish notion that not inbreeding is somehow fighting against the problem.
Well, let's put your bull breeding in Haldane's formula.

1. Your breeding technique seems to have a selective advantage of 100% s=1. You said that you could slaughter any cows that did not have the trait that you wanted.

In nature that would mean that every organism that did not have that trait would die in one generation. The problem with that is that there can also be other reasons why animals die in nature besides just genetics, other animals, accidents lack of food. Haldane calculated that the other factors that cause death would wipe a species in nature if it had much higher than a 1% selective advantage.

But in a controlled environment, most of the other death factors do not affect the animals that are being bred.

2. In your breeding example your beneficial mutation rate "v" seems to be equal to 1 nucleotide per generation.

This is not even close to what the beneficial mutation rate would be in nature according to "The barbarian" "So why don't we see all those mutations changing phenotypes? It's because most mutations don't do much of anything at all. Changing one amino acid in a protein generally doesn't affect its activity in any measurable way."

Most polymorphism mutations are at least slightly deleterious. Kimura used 1E-8 as his neutral mutation rate.

So your breeding example has nothing to do with what actually happens in nature. Breeding is an artificial change in the genome brought about by an intelligence.

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Re: Absurdity of evolution

Post #68

Post by Purple Knight »

The Barbarian wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 9:41 amBecause we think that human life is of value, and we consider every genetic disorder to be a bad thing, we rely on outbreeding to avoid it. Usually that works. But not always. There's still a chance that you'd encounter someone with the same harmful recessive.
My point is, every time we outbreed, and spread the bad recessives instead of concentrating and removing them, this chance increases.
The Barbarian wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 9:41 amIt's evolved that way for a reason.
Passing the buck works for politicians and vertebrates. Sometimes, if you ignore a problem long enough, it actually does go away, which is why we have that instinct. If it never worked, we wouldn't have the inclination. There aren't really bad instincts, as in, following them would hurt you more than it'd help.

What might still be true is that selection of some sort is needed for passing the buck to work. Perhaps, by the time those two recessives would find each other again, 99% of the time, they're gone; selected out by some other randomness. We ignored the problem and it went away.

What's troubling is that we're passing the buck in a world without selection, where everyone breeds if they want to. That means those four copies of the bad gene become eight, and then sixteen, on and on every time the population doubles. Now, this is going on with every bad recessive in existence, with everyone working at the seeming behest of the bad genes and doing the optimal thing to spread them: Outbreeding.

Now, I agree that humans probably shouldn't inbreed. However, if technology doesn't rise to challenge this terrifying genetic snowball of death, we're all screwed.

Interesting article about the Ashkenazi mutation.

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Re: Absurdity of evolution

Post #69

Post by Purple Knight »

EarthScienceguy wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 10:17 amWell, let's put your bull breeding in Haldane's formula.

1. Your breeding technique seems to have a selective advantage of 100% s=1. You said that you could slaughter any cows that did not have the trait that you wanted.
I don't have to slaughter any until the third generation. If I make sure to prevent any males without the trait from breeding, I can slaughter none until the third generation and only have to kill 1/4 to have my entire herd express the trait.
EarthScienceguy wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 10:17 amSo your breeding example has nothing to do with what actually happens in nature.
Of course it doesn't. It specifically addresses Haldane and his statement that with cattle, you can't kill off half your females. I agree with that. I prize my females. Females can make more. Females are extra-valuable. This is why I specifically addressed Haldane's very true claim that you can't just kill off half your females.
EarthScienceguy wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 10:17 amThis is not even close to what the beneficial mutation rate would be in nature according to "The barbarian" "So why don't we see all those mutations changing phenotypes? It's because most mutations don't do much of anything at all. Changing one amino acid in a protein generally doesn't affect its activity in any measurable way."
That muscle cow is an example of one mutation drastically affecting a phenotype. Yes, beneficial mutations are rare, but they are not selected for in a linear way, to obtain first one, fix it in the population, then get started working on another. There are many mutations at any given time, the beneficial ones being slowly fixed by selection, this process occurring simultaneously on probably thousands of traits which can always recombine sexually, so Haldane's calculations are flawed.

Haldane's Dilemma probably applies pretty well to organisms that can't mate and recombine benefits, however. This is probably why bacteria are still bacteria. They must linearly fix one beneficial mutation and then wait for another. I also don't have a lot of hope for whiptail lizards. They can't become anything better than they are, and will probably fail to adapt to the next big change that hits them and go extinct.

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Re: Absurdity of evolution

Post #70

Post by The Barbarian »

Purple Knight wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 4:24 pmNow, I agree that humans probably shouldn't inbreed. However, if technology doesn't rise to challenge this terrifying genetic snowball of death, we're all screwed.
Fortunately, there's a mechanism. If a particular harmful recessive becomes relatively common, it starts to kill more people. In doing so, it decreases the frequency of that allele in the population, unless the allele has some useful trait such a the heterozygous condition in HgS, sickle cell. But note that in the United States, the frequency of the allele is declining, because there is no selective value to being a heterozygote for HgS.
Interesting article about the Ashkenazi mutation.
Pretty hotly debated right now. I'm inclined to think that the extreme social pressures on Ashkanazi Jews in Europe were sufficient to bring about a culture which strongly valued learning, and thereby raised intelligent people.

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