LUCA is LOCO!

[Jorge]

You also can't calculate the probability of a result of a feedback process by taking a one-time snapshot of that result. You have to factor in the effects of the feedback at each step in the process, something ID/Creationists have never done.

The probability of being dealt a five card royal straight flush in a one time poker hand deal is 1 in 649,740. However if you add the feedback of being able to discard / redraw the probability increases considerably. If you are allowed an unlimited number of discard / redraw attempts the probability will approach 1.0

Bwahahahahahaha

That, ladies and gents, is what I have come to call "The Dawkins Egg" (also, The Dawkins Flop).

Dawkins laid this egg in his The Blind Watchmaker when he presented the "Methinks it is like a weasel" program. The bottom line of this ostrich-sized egg is that Dawkins inserts the solution (the "evolutionary goal") into his program and then he actually becomes very excited when his program generates the result is "43 attempts" instead of the countless trillions of attempts that "blind chance" would take.

And now we have Beagle Boy laying the EGG again.


Bwahahahahahaha


I sure hope others here can see the side-splitting humor. Frankly, after laying that egg I was
surprised that Dawkins wasn't ousted forevermore from all science and speaking engagements.

Jorge

[HMS_Beagle]

You ought not use the word "ignorant" against people while displaying truckloads of it yourself.
"Feedback" is a very big concept which clearly by far exceeds your pay scale.

When describing your abysmal knowledge of science "ignorant" certainly applies. "Willfully ignorant" applies even better given how many times you've been corrected on your blunders.

Selection pressure on a population is indeed a feedback that helps determine the genetic makeup of each subsequent generation. Feedback processes are yet another topic you're completely ignorant on.

[HMS_Beagle]

That, ladies and gents, is what I have come to call "The Dawkins Egg" (also, The Dawkins Flop).

We'll add basic probability theory to the huge list of things of which you're completely ignorant.

[Jorge]

I'm not going to get into the question of how reverse gyrase actually evolved (or not, in Jorge's view). I'm just going to take a moment to explain why the 10^520 figure is bogus.

As i just mentioned in my previous post, reverse gyrase tolerates a LOT of variability - plus or minus on the order of 200 amino acids in length, and lots of individual amino acid differences internally. And that's just from a small sampling of the present-day reverse gyrases, which are presumably all highly efficient at what they do. It's likely that lots of these organisms could get by with a much shorter, far less efficient enzyme (though it would undoubtedly rapidly evolve to something more efficient).

Calculating probabilities involves both a numerator and a denominator. I'll assume Jorge's calculation of the denominator is right. But he just put a 1 for the numerator, presumably because he hadn't taken time to think about it at all. The fact is, we have no idea what the numerator should be - we have no idea what percentage of the entire population of proteins could act as a reverse gyrase. But we do know for certain that it isn't 1.

You ought not make unwarranted assumptions. I know about allowable variations. There are a number of factors involved (e.g., specific sites). But the bottom line is that you are way, WAY off base. Watch ...

Let's use your numbers - suppose that 200 amino acids allow variability. That's 200 out of 1,000 (the lower number of amino acids that YOU provided) that DO tolerate variations. Okay, so that means that 800 of the 1,000 do NOT tolerate variability.

My initial calculation used 400 amino acids. The actual (low) figure (provided by you) is 1,000 out of which 800 do not allow for variations. Fine, so now you have to work with 20⁸⁰⁰ = about 10¹⁰⁴¹ instead of my earlier 10⁵²⁰.

So, nope, my results are not "bogus" except that I used 400 instead of 1,000.
But the general message remains the same - an infinitesimal probability.

Jorge

[Jorge]

As has been pointed out, you are leaving out

(1) the (unknown) number of similarly functioning genes which serve as a denominator for the raw probabiliyt calculation
(2) the influence of natural selection on the process, which filters each step along the way, trimming away many orders of magnitude the number of potential sequences which must be tried.

How to calculate the reduction in the 'trial space' of these to your probability space is essentially unknown, but simulations of natural selection have clearly shown the single most powerful element is #2. Natural selection has been shown over and over to be capable of bringing these kinds of 'impossible' probability values well into the 'probable' range. You are better off to focus on how the original replicators came to be. Once they are here, the principles of mutation and natural selection God built into the universe, into this planets system, are more than sufficient to get us from there to here.

Jim

I totally demolish both 1 and 2 in posts (above).

And your natural tendency to embrace the Materialistic position is once again demonstrated.

In any event, do you have anything other that 1 or 2 - those are refuted!

Jorge

[Jorge]

I think it's obvious. The text says "On the left is the amino acid sequence of reverse gyrase matched to its secondary structure as determined by crystallography". The left side shows a sequence of 1050 amino acids.Yes, you're incompetent. Of course there was stuff evolving before LUCA. LUCA evolved from predecessors. The only remarkable thing about LUCA is that nothing else contemporaneous to it has any surviving descendants.I'll stick to watching you a fool of yourself, thanks.That so-called 'probability' is utter nonsense. Evolution doesn't and never has proceed by generating random sequences of proteins. It modifies what is already present, so the probability of a particular amino-acid sequence occurring is heavily dependent on its similarity to other sequences that already exist - and as the source I provided shows, reverse gyrase has homologies to other shorter proteins, so probably evolved from a chance mutation that resulted in those precursors being expressed as a single long amino-acid chain rather than two shorter chains.You actually allowed 100 trillion trials per second, which is a ridiculous underestimate given current estimates of the Earths bacterial population of five million trillion trillion. You've used the wrong inputs to the wrong calculation and so your entire post is garbage-in-to-garbage-out.

Since you're asking questions, here's one back: Why haven't you paid TWeb $150?

So many blunders, I wouldn't know where to begin. So I won't ...
.
.
.
I will, however, reply to that last question:
ASKED AND ANSWERED!!! You must be stupid to keep asking the same!

Jorge

[Jorge]

So the answer is you're going to double down on your scientific incompetence.

That's two.

Three different people read it and commented on your misunderstanding Clucky. Of course it couldn't possibly be you who is wrong.

Yes, you are all wrong and I clearly explained why in previous posts. Live with it.

Read up on genetic drift. Also let's see your evidence none of the genetic changes were beneficial.

"Genetic drift"... You want to have "Evolution" and "genetic drift" before you have an organism fully capable of such things, is that it? As for your "beneficial genetic changes" - for several reasons that is one of the oldest PRATTS in the book and you know it. One of the reasons is simple enough: for a specific end result the changes must accumulate towards that result. So, how does the organism retain changes when the goal is hundreds, thousand or millions of changes away? What about the organism's cost to retain those changes for hundreds or thousands of generations until the entire result arrives? Is the organism clairvoyant?

You really need to learn how to think sans the Evolutionary tinted spectacles.

Still with the stupid claim evolution had to search the entire sequence space instead of modifying a simpler working precursor. Is that concept just too much for your simple mind to grasp?

Good heavens you are s-t-u-p-i-d! And you compound your stupidity with arrogance. The entire sequence space is there a priori. YOU, not I, has to explain how "blind evolution" evades the gazillions of bad sequences and zeroes-in on the relatively few good sequences - that was what the OP asked. Teleology is not allowed in your world, remember?

Also, you absolutely CANNOT invoke "natural selection" because natural selection could not possibly be operating BEFORE you had an organism that was making use of a particular (incomplete) chain of amino acids. Otherwise, why would the organism preserve a useless chain?

And all of that is sidestepping the question of HOW DID THAT SPECIFIC SEQUENCE ARRIVE?
Statistically the chances are infinitesimal yet your desire to believe it covers that gap.

But some changes in individuals do provide an advantage. Those with the advantage reproduce more and their beneficial genetic variations come to be the norm for the population.

Read my lips: an INCOMPLETE chemical sequence (leading to RG) does not confer ANY advantage. Why would it be retained and passed on to the next generation? You really must get into science and out of Fantasy Land. But wait, if you did that then your precious Evolution wouldn't survive, would it. Never mind - go back to La La Land.

Jorge

[Jorge]

When describing your abysmal knowledge of science "ignorant" certainly applies. "Willfully ignorant" applies even better given how many times you've been corrected on your blunders.

Selection pressure on a population is indeed a feedback that helps determine the genetic makeup of each subsequent generation. Feedback processes are yet another topic you're completely ignorant on.

I will not allow you to cheat. You got that?

You cannot invoke things that apply to populations of (Evolutionary) organism BEFORE there were populations of (Evolutionary) organisms. They were talking about LUCA. Then you went to pre-LUCA life. Read the articles - they were talking about the origin of life. You got that? ORIGIN! Are you saying that these scientists are wrong about their identification of LUCA? That you have a pre-LUCA --- a LUCA LUCA ----- which is the "real" LUCA? Is that what you're saying? Get your story straight because BS is oozing through your pores.

Jorge

[TheLurch]

Let's use your numbers - suppose that 200 amino acids allow variability. That's 200 out of 1,000 (the lower number of amino acids that YOU provided) that DO tolerate variations. Okay, so that means that 800 of the 1,000 do NOT tolerate variability.

That's utterly, utterly wrong. My numbers are about the length variation - how many of amino acids there are in the protein total. You are now talking about the sequence variation - whether a given amino acid can tolerate a substitution with a different amino acid. The two are in no way equivalent, and aren't even related - you're comparing apples to submarines.

The reality is that, in most proteins we've studied, nearly every single amino acid other than a handful of key ones in the active sites, can be substituted for by at least one other amino acid, in most cases several others, and in many locations, any amino acid will work. So your (completely pulled out of thin air) number of 200 is completely unrealistic to the point where you seem unhinged to even suggest it. In a 1200 amino acid protein, chances are good that over 1150 amino acids would tolerate at least one substitution, if not many more.

Again, that's not even getting into length. Or the fact that most proteins can tolerate multiple substitutions at the same time. Or the fact that it's possible that other proteins that are structurally unrelated to this one could possibly provide reverse gyrase activity.

So i'll reiterate - neither you, nor i, nor any biologist on the surface of the planet has the slightest idea what the numerator is.

I totally demolish both 1 and 2 in posts (above).

No, you don't. You make fundamental errors in your argument, one that someone who actually knows any biology would have recognized. Your excessive overconfidence does not overcome that.

EDITED TO ADD:

Yes, you are all wrong and I clearly explained why in previous posts. Live with it.
...
Good heavens you are s-t-u-p-i-d! And you compound your stupidity with arrogance.

In the future, you might want to think about waiting for the errors in your post to be pointed out before going overboard with patting yourself on the back.

[HMS_Beagle]

That's two.

Two times you've doubled down on your ignorance and stupidity? It's way more than that.

Yes, you are all wrong and I clearly explained why in previous posts. Live with it.

You claimed it with zero evidence as always and ignored the correct explanation as always.

"Genetic drift"... You want to have "Evolution" and "genetic drift" before you have an organism fully capable of such things, is that it? As for your "beneficial genetic changes" - for several reasons that is one of the oldest PRATTS in the book and you know it.

More empty clucking.

One of the reasons is simple enough: for a specific end result the changes must accumulate towards that result. So, how does the organism retain changes when the goal is hundreds, thousand or millions of changes away? What about the organism's cost to retain those changes for hundreds or thousands of generations until the entire result arrives? Is the organism clairvoyant?

Still more ignorance. Evolution doesn't aim for any specific result. The only "goal" is to survive long enough to produce one more generation. It doesn't matter what changes to make that happen.

You really need to learn how to think sans the Evolutionary tinted spectacles.

You really need to learn to think, period.

Good heavens you are s-t-u-p-i-d! And you compound your stupidity with arrogance. The entire sequence space is there a priori. YOU, not I, has to explain how "blind evolution" evades the gazillions of bad sequences and zeroes-in on the relatively few good sequences - that was what the OP asked. Teleology is not allowed in your world, remember?

But it doesn't all have to be searched, stupid. The feedback process of evolution starts with a simple working example and modifies it from there. Your claim is as stupid as saying no one can ever walk a mile because they'd have to explore all 87+ million square feet of space in a mile radius from the start.

Also, you absolutely CANNOT invoke "natural selection" because natural selection could not possibly be operating BEFORE you had an organism that was making use of a particular (incomplete) chain of amino acids. Otherwise, why would the organism preserve a useless chain?

Natural selection operates as soon as you have imperfect self replicators competing for resources. Your ignorance never ceases to amaze.

And all of that is sidestepping the question of HOW DID THAT SPECIFIC SEQUENCE ARRIVE?
Statistically the chances are infinitesimal yet your desire to believe it covers that gap.

Still the stupid claim it was all chance instead of chance and selection feedback.

Read my lips: an INCOMPLETE chemical sequence (leading to RG) does not confer ANY advantage.

Still more empty clucking. Show there are no possible simpler sequences than extant RG which can confer an advantage.

[HMS_Beagle]

I will not allow you to cheat. You got that?

You cannot invoke things that apply to populations of (Evolutionary) organism BEFORE there were populations of (Evolutionary) organisms. They were talking about LUCA. Then you went to pre-LUCA life. Read the articles - they were talking about the origin of life. You got that? ORIGIN! Are you saying that these scientists are wrong about their identification of LUCA? That you have a pre-LUCA --- a LUCA LUCA ----- which is the "real" LUCA? Is that what you're saying? Get your story straight because BS is oozing through your pores.

Pointing out your continued scientific ignorance isn't cheating Clucky. The LUCA described in the research isn't touted as the first life on Earth. The non-science writer of your TheWeek article, Jeva Lange, got it wrong too.

This is reminiscent of your ignorance when you argued for weeks that "Mitochondrial Eve" data meant there was only one woman alive on the Earth in her time.

[Jorge]

That's utterly, utterly wrong. My numbers are about the length variation - how many of amino acids there are in the protein total. You are now talking about the sequence variation - whether a given amino acid can tolerate a substitution with a different amino acid. The two are in no way equivalent, and aren't even related - you're comparing apples to submarines.

The reality is that, in most proteins we've studied, nearly every single amino acid other than a handful of key ones in the active sites, can be substituted for by at least one other amino acid, in most cases several others, and in many locations, any amino acid will work. So your (completely pulled out of thin air) number of 200 is completely unrealistic to the point where you seem unhinged to even suggest it. In a 1200 amino acid protein, chances are good that over 1150 amino acids would tolerate at least one substitution, if not many more.

Again, that's not even getting into length. Or the fact that most proteins can tolerate multiple substitutions at the same time. Or the fact that it's possible that other proteins that are structurally unrelated to this one could possibly provide reverse gyrase activity.

So i'll reiterate - neither you, nor i, nor any biologist on the surface of the planet has the slightest idea what the numerator is.


No, you don't. You make fundamental errors in your argument, one that someone who actually knows any biology would have recognized. Your excessive overconfidence does not overcome that.

EDITED TO ADD:


In the future, you might want to think about waiting for the errors in your post to be pointed out before going overboard with patting yourself on the back.

Just two comments, on the highlighted sections above:

(1) Nothing - absolutely nothing! - that I've ever read/studied indicates that 1150 out of 1200 amino acids of a functional enzyme (protein) can be substituted and still retain the primary function. Everything that I've ever seen indicates that an infinitesimal percentage of functional variations exist within the space of possible structures. Sorry, NO SALE!

(2) Perhaps neither you nor I nor anyone is able to give a precise number (to single-digit precision), but what I've read/studied in the past indicates that we can at least get a very reasonable estimate of allowable variations.

There are solid reasons for allowable variations. As you (should) know, change any amino acid and the linear chain (primary structure) changes. Fine, let's grant that ALL of these are allowable (they're not but let's just allow it). In that case an amino acid substitution may possibly change the secondary, tertiary and quaternary structure of that protein. Folding, for instance, may occur differently or not at all. Function would then likely fly out the window. Methinks you are not thinking about this deeply enough.

In short, and like I said before, NO SALE.

Jorge

[Roy]

I'll try to keep it civil until you depart from civility (which shouldn't take long).
Bluntly, try thinking before writing.

That's keeping it civil?

[Roy]

No one except the most ignorant Creationists think amino acids or AA chains had to fall together all at once or try every possible combination in the probability space.

And no one except the most ignorant of all ignoramuses believes that I think as you claim.

Really? In the same post is this:

To specifically and blindly get to RG you needed on the order of 10⁵³⁰ such modifications to occur.

10⁵³⁰ is the number of modifications needed to try every possible combination in the probability space. Looks like Jorge the welcher does think evolution works that way. He is an ignorant creationist.

Further evidence:

The "simplest" life imaginable requires many proteins, not just (not even necessarily) RG.

The simplest life imaginable doesn't require any proteins. Cf the RNA-world hypothesis.

[Roy]

Let's have some SCIENCE here, okay? Anything else shall be called out / booted out immediately.

So many blunders, I wouldn't know where to begin. So I won't ...

Time for you to boot yourself out of your own thread,