Tag: evolution

Mailvox: Evolutionary Rhetoric

An eminent authority on mathematics, namely, Frank J. Tipler, recommends that we keep things a bit more simple and rhetorical for the innumerate enthusiasts of evolution by natural selection:

You are of course quite correct that biologists do not understand the mathematical criticisms of evolution by natural selection. Since they are incapable of being reached by dialectic, perhaps rhetoric would be more effective.

One rhetorical technique is Argument From Authority.

In your July 13, 2024 “Evolutionists are Retarded,” you refer to the mathematical arguments given in the 1966 conference by “a professor of electrical engineering from MIT and a French mathematician.” In one of your earlier posts on this subject, you mentioned the similar criticisms by the mathematician S. Ulam, but you did not say who Stanislaw Ulam was.

Ulam was the co-discoverer of the Teller-Ulam design for the thermonuclear bomb. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Teller–Ulam_design). Ulam also discovered the Monte Carlo Method (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method) which was essential to working out the details of the H-bomb’s mechanism. Now the Monte Carlo Method is an evolution by natural selection technique that actually works!

An example of the Monte Carlo Method is Richard Dawkins’ “Methinks it is a weasel” so-called “example” of Darwinian evolution (it’s not). In the “Methinks” example, the endpoint is chosen ahead of time (this is teleology, which is implied by determinism — recall that Monte Carlo has a “deterministic” piece in the algorithm). Certainly, if there is a future goal chosen, natural selection can find it. The Monte Carlo Method works! But the key point of Darwinism is that evolution is assumed to have no goal.

Which means that Darwinism doesn’t work mathematically, for the reasons you’ve stated. Which was Ulam’s point. And Ulam understood the mathematics — he ought to, he invented it — and the biologists did not, and have not, and cannot.

So, if these people cannot be reached by dialectic, they might be reached by rhetoric: Ulam was a great mathematician who understood the mathematics of evolution.

Argument from Authority does not establish truth, but it does establish presumption of truth: if you cannot understand the mathematics, assume that the mathematicians do.

So there it is. Evolutionary biologists don’t understand the mathematics of evolution. And you don’t have to take the word of a humble truck driver and part-time plumber for it either, that’s on the authority of a very well-respected professor of mathematics as well as a famous mathematician of historical note.

The man can certainly turn a phrase. This one is definitely going in the aphorism book:

If you cannot understand the mathematics, assume that the mathematicians do.
–Frank J. Tipler, Professor of Mathematics, Tulane University

That French mathematician I mentioned in the previous post was no slouch either. One thing that has become very clear is that the educated critics of TENS are vastly smarter, on average, than its best-known and most-educated advocates.

DISCUSS ON SG

Evolutionists are Retarded

It’s almost astonishing to read the papers and presentations of the 1966 Symposium and see how a) biologists simply do not understand the logical and mathematical criticisms of their vacuous tautologies, and b) how their futile defenses of evolution by natural selection haven’t substantively changed in nearly sixty years despite all of the advances in genetics. Consider the similarities between three following attempts, separated by 55 years, to address the obvious problem of probability and fixation when applied to mutations, by resorting to what the evolutionists call “cumulative selection” and “massively parallel fixation”.

  • Natural selection may appear to be a vacuous and tautological principle if only a single step is considered, but considered over a long succession of little steps, it is the only guiding principle that has stood up under experiment. Eden refers to the 10350 proteins, each consisting of 250 amino acids. He seems to imply that it would require something like this number of operations of natural selection to arrive at a particular useful one. On the principle of the children’s game of twenty questions in which it is possible to arrive at the correct one of about a million objects by a succession of 20 yes-or-no answers, it would require less than 1250 questions to arrive at a specified one of these proteins. While this is not a perfect analogy to natural selection, it is enormously more like natural selection than the typing at random of a library of 1,000 volumes with its infinitesimal chance of arriving at any sensible result. – Dr. Sewall Wright, 1966
  • I don’t know who it was first pointed out that, given enough time, a monkey bashing away at random on a typewriter could produce all the works of Shakespeare. The operative phrase is, of course, given enough time. Let us limit the task facing our monkey somewhat. Suppose that he has to produce, not the complete works of Shakespeare but just the short sentence ‘Methinks it is like a weasel’, and we shall make it relatively easy by giving him a typewriter with a restricted keyboard, one with just the 26 (capital) letters, and a space bar. How long will he take to write this one little sentence? We again use our computer monkey, but with a crucial difference in its program. It again begins by choosing a random sequence of 28 letters, just as before, it duplicates it repeatedly, but with a certain chance of random error – ‘mutation’ – in the copying. The computer examines the mutant nonsense phrases, the ‘progeny’ of the original phrase, and chooses the one which, however slightly, most resembles the target phrase, METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. – Richard Dawkins, 1988.
  • Essentially the key of my program in comparison with your hypothesis which you laid out is that, when I have this letter of G trying to change to A, that doesn’t stop this other letter to be working toward modifying itself toward this. So essentially, the key to the difference between our two models, which differ by billions of years probably, if we were to ultimately make calculations with them, is that my model allows parallel evolution of different genes. – JF Gariepy, 2021

Now, there is no shame in their trying to address the criticism, but the retardery lies in the fact that they believe they have addressed it successfully when they haven’t even grasped the problem correctly. None of these explanatory models hold up. What we actually have here is nothing more than ontological appeals to their own imaginations, supported by simplistic and irrelevant metaphors.

Somnio ergo est is their motto. I dream, therefore it is.

In this vein, consider the sum total of one biologist’s response to the mathematical arguments of a professor of electrical engineering from MIT and a French mathematician:

I cannot accept the mathematical arguments of M. Eden and M. P. Schutzenberger that many of the statements of the principles of evolution are tautologous. Evolutionary theory, at least to me, is certainly not vacuous.

That’s it. Just an appeal to his own authority. That’s literally all they’ve got. As for the three models, there are a panoply of errors and false assumptions in them, but the most fundamental mistake the three model-makers are all making should be obvious to anyone who has ever played a game involving dice. The previous die has no effect on the subsequent one and there is no cumulative result. This is particularly true for Gariepy’s model, wherein he proposes rolling two or more dice at the same time.

But there is no model that will support evolution by natural selection, and there never will be, because models require math and math clearly and comprehensively disproves even the most remote possibility of sufficient genetic fixation required for speciation taking place as a result of evolution over time.

There exists no (computer) model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. Period. By “model,” we mean definitive simulations or foundational mathematics required of a hard science. We show that no meaningful information can arise from an evolutionary process unless that process is guided. Even when guided, the degree of evolution’s accomplishment is limited by the expertise of the guiding information source — a limit we call Basener’s ceiling. An evolutionary program whose goal is to master chess will never evolve further and offer investment advice. There exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. Hard sciences are built on foundations of mathematics or definitive simulations. Examples include electromagnetics, Newtonian mechanics, geophysics, relativity, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, optics, and many areas in biology. Those hoping to establish Darwinian evolution as a hard science with a model have either failed or inadvertently cheated.

Top Ten Questions and Objections to ‘Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics’ – Robert J. Marks II – June 12, 2017

DISCUSS ON SG

History is Incomplete

The conventional historical narrative leaves more than a few significant gaps in the record that are regularly exposed in a glaring manner by archeology. For example, what culture 2,000 years ago had the ability to surgically repair a fractured skull and successfully install a metal reinforcement? And what culture featured people with skulls shaped like these?

The world is a lot stranger than we’re supposed to believe. Of this, you can be very, very confident. And, of course, the more genetically complicated things get, the more the genetic ranges expand, the more powerful the evidence for MITTENS becomes.

DISCUSS ON SG

An Appeal to Innumeracy

I have to admit, while I was confident that all the true believers in the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection were going to do their level best to avoid every doing any of the simple math required by MITTENS (Mathematical Impossibility of The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection), I didn’t realize they were going to go so far as to literally deny the applicability of mathematics to what can now only be described as “the magic of evolution”.

Whitelightning777: Humans and chimps only differ genetically by 1% or so. That’s hardly revolutionary. When zoos have to do surgery on primates, the vets often consult human surgeons for expert advice. Go to a zoo. Look at the hands of chimps. A common ancestor is obvious. There is no way that’s a coincidence!! Just the fact that chimps can learn sign language ought to show a recent divergence. The fact that they can use human metallic tools shows that the brain also works in a similar fashion, just that chimps still aren’t quite as smart as humans, about what a 3 to 5 year old child can do. Look at the difference between wild carp and goldfish. Living things can be pressured to change structure rapidly when circumstances create the pressure to do so.

Spacebunny: You have no idea what you’re talking about. You can’t do math, nor do you understand the significance of the numbers given. No, they could not have done any such thing “a few million years ago”. It is literally mathematically impossible.

Whitelightning777: Both a 1% to a 10% difference or maybe even more could be accomplished over a period of 2 to 4 million years. The main issues are what factors exactly drove this natural selection and how much pressure was exerted upon humans by nature, animal predators and other human species attacking each other. By the way, neanderthals weren’t necessarily as nice as we all seem to think.

James Dixon: The math says no.

VD: 1.23 percent of the human genome means 37,500,000 unique base pairs specific to humans. Now, tell us how long it would take to mutate and fixate that degree of genetic disparity…

Whitelightning777: First of all, the majority of your DNA is essentially junk. The exact percentage is disputed but can be as high as 90%. Small genetic changes can quickly lead to huge differences. Over a few million years you don’t have to change very much from one generation to the next. The ABILITY to evolve, genetic flexibility itself is something that nature selects for. Creatures that can’t evolve are usually extinct. The multiple numbers of human races attest to our genetic flexibility. The modern races are only a few hundred thousand years old & have meaningful differences in health and IQ, although the extent is disputed. If our species lost it’s ability to evolve, it wouldn’t be able to split off into races either. Chimps themselves also have different races and species. Bonobos behave very differently from other chimps, even though they can all interbreed.

Dirk Gently: So, in other words, you don’t even comprehend what Vox is saying

Whitelightning777: Vox is setting a “math trap”. This is a device used by creationists. What Vox fails to realize is that 90% of that DNA is junk and that there is no upper limit to how fast evolution and generic change which can occur so long as the offspring survives and is able to reproduce. What Vox fails to realize is that a creature that can only evolve slowly will go extinct, falling behind and losing out to those with more generic flexibility.

VD: A “math trap” is a simply a basic calculation used by people who are numerate. It’s not witchcraft, no matter how opaque it may be to you. There absolutely is an upper limit to how fast mutated genes can fixate. Evolution by natural selection, biased mutation, genetic drift, and gene flow is utterly impossible by the very fastest rates of fixation ever observed in the wild or in laboratories. I will put the problem in two very simple analogies so you might be able to understand the problem.

If someone tells you the score of a professional baseball game is 562,987 to 3, you know the score is incorrect. If someone tells you he walked from New York City to Los Angeles in 34 minutes, you know he is lying. And when someone tells you that the 37.5 million human-specific base-pairs in the human genome were mutated and fixated by natural selection in less than 10 million years, you know they are absolutely wrong. Your junior high logic will never bridge that gap. It cannot. Because it is based on incorrect and impossible premises.

Whitelightning777: MATH DOESN’T APPLY to evolution.

VD: Of all the absurdly retarded statements I’ve ever seen on every form of social media dating back to the bulletin boards of the 1990s, this is, without any doubt whatsoever, the most retarded. Congratulations. Even the kid who thought bacon came from rocks was simply ignorant. But this assertion actually required enough brainpower to contemplate the concept, think it through, and then reject the idea that mathematics necessarily applies to a process that is conceived to take place over a quantifiable period of time.

Whitelightning777: Let’s keep this simple. The only math that matters with evolution is that the birth rate of a particular lifeform exceeds the death rate or barring that is at an equilibrium. Creatures for whom the death rate exceeds their birth rate are dysgenic. Creationist trick boxes are neither required nor desired.

VD: You’re literally retarded.

You don’t have to be retarded to… well, yes, at this point, it is abundantly clear that you do have to be literally retarded to believe in evolution by natural selection. As you can see, the challenge posed to the Neo-Darwinian synthesis by MITTENS is so overwhelmingly devastating that the evolutionists have to abandon not only science, but math itself, in order to cling to their outmoded, outdated, and disproven explanation for the observable diversity of life.

DISCUSS ON SG

AI vs Biologists

In an attempt to make the subject easier for people to understand, a programmer ran MITTENS through ChatGPT, and despite the usual issues and very generous assumptions of tiny populations and high fixation probabilities, the results tend to demonstrate why biologists will have to avoid MITTENS as long as they possibly can in order to continue clinging to their outdated and disproven assumptions about the origin of the species. Somewhat amusingly, the AI did not provide a final answer in terms of the range of times required for fixation given its estimates and assumptions, but contented itself with saying that a population-wide fixation could perhaps happen eventually, in theory, given a sufficiently beneficial mutation.

This AI-generated summary usefully points the way toward filling in the various blanks that would permit a full fixation simulator to provide valid answers when prompted with the relevant variables that can be derived from existing genetic studies, such as observed selection coefficients and drift factors. Interestingly enough, even the analogy of the simplified explanation demonstrates the implausibility of the fixations required for every human to possess the same human-specific genes sans a mechanism far more akin to IGM than TE(p)NSBMGDaGF.

As it turns out, the AI is effectively “smarter” than the biologists, because unlike biologists like JFG and Richard Dawkins, the AI “comprehends” that the mathematical challenges posed are both relevant and real.

Simplified Explanation for Non-Mathematicians

Think of mutation and fixation in genetics akin to introducing a new smartphone model and observing how quickly it becomes the only model used by everyone. Mutation rate is like the frequency of new model launches, while fixation rate is like observing how quickly each new model becomes the dominant one used by the public. Selective events are like market conditions that favor the rapid adoption of certain models over others (e.g., a significant technological advancement).

Understanding Fixation Rate with an Example

The fixation rate in a population genetics context refers to the frequency at which a particular mutation becomes present in every individual of a population, effectively replacing all other versions of that gene. Let’s break down the concept of fixation rate using a simplified example.

Example: Introducing a Beneficial Mutation in a Small Population

Imagine a small population of 1000 butterflies. A mutation occurs in one butterfly that makes its wings brighter, potentially giving it a better chance of avoiding predators.

Step 1: Mutation Occurs

  • Initial mutation: One butterfly develops a mutation for brighter wings.
  • Population size (N): 1000 butterflies.
  • Number of mutants at the start (m): 1.

Step 2: Determine Fixation Probability

For a beneficial mutation, the fixation probability can be higher than that of a neutral mutation. If we assume this mutation offers a slight survival advantage, let’s denote the selection coefficient by 𝑠s, where 𝑠s is small, say 0.01 (1%).

The fixation probability (𝑃P) for beneficial mutations can be approximated using the formula:

𝑃(𝑓𝑖𝑥𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛)≈2𝑠1−𝑒−4𝑁𝑠P(fixation)≈1−e−4Ns2s​

Plugging in our numbers:

  • 𝑁=1000 (population size),
  • 𝑠=0.01 (selection advantage).

𝑃(𝑓𝑖𝑥𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛)≈2×0.011−𝑒−4×1000×0.01P(fixation)≈1−e−4×1000×0.012×0.01​ 𝑃(𝑓𝑖𝑥𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛)≈0.021−𝑒−40P(fixation)≈1−e−400.02​

Since 𝑒−40e−40 is a very small number close to zero, the formula simplifies to:

Step 3: Calculate the Fixation Rate

The fixation rate involves how quickly this mutation spreads through the entire population until it becomes the only variant present. This rate not only depends on the fixation probability but also on factors like the generation time and population dynamics. If the mutation indeed confers a survival advantage, and given that the probability of fixation is about 2%, it implies that in favorable conditions, it might eventually spread to the entire population.

Step 4: Observing the Outcome

  • Generational time: Assuming each butterfly generation spans one year.
  • Over many generations, we observe whether the mutation spreads and reaches fixation (where all 1000 butterflies have the mutation) or is lost due to drift or other factors.

Key Takeaways

  • Fixation Probability: Even with a beneficial mutation, the probability of fixation isn’t guaranteed but is significantly higher than for neutral mutations. In our example, there’s a 2% chance the beneficial mutation will fixate in the population.
  • Impact of Population Size: Larger populations may see a slower spread of mutations due to their sheer size and genetic diversity.
  • Role of Selection Coefficient: A higher 𝑠s value (greater advantage conferred by the mutation) increases the probability of fixation.

DISCUSS ON SG

A Physicist Endorses MITTENS

Your MITTENS Theorem is of course valid, and more precise and detailed than was possible for the physicists in 1966. You have also independently proposed the correct, and only possible alternative to Neo-Darwinism, what you termed IGM in your October 14, 2012 blog post. You should repost this mechanism, together with more discussion. This mechanism has been repeatedly rediscovered since the famous 19th century Harvard biologist Asa Gray first proposed it, correctly identifying God, not intelligent aliens, as the agent. Charles Darwin himself denounced Gray’s version of your theory, which is less precise than your version.
– Dr. Frank Tipler, Professor of Mathematics and Physics, Tulane University

I had no idea what he was talking about until I looked up the post. It turns out that IGM stands for Intelligent Genetic Manipulation, which is a mechanism I developed in response to four points put forth to me by one of the more reasonable Neo-Darwinians.

  1. Let us take as evidentially established the fact that species which existed in the past now exist no longer and are extinct.
  2. Let us take as evidentially established the fact that not all species now extant existed at all times throughout the history of organic life.
  3. Therefore, it must be possible for species which did not exist to come into existence by some mechanism, just as species which do exist can go extinct by any variety of mechanisms.
  4. If it is a fact that new species can come into existence while others go extinct, by what mechanism other than evolution through natural selection are these species proposed to arise, and does that proposed mechanism explain more of the observed evidence than TeNS?

I more or less concurred with the first three points, and in response to the fourth, proposed Intelligent Genetic Manipulation as a mechanism that not only explains more of the observed evidence than TeNS, but unlike TeNS, remains potentially valid because it has not been mathematically ruled out by MITTENS. Please keep in mind that this was written 12 years ago, long before some of the significant advances in the various genome projects which are far more consistent with intelligent genetic manipulation than with the Theorum of Evolution by (probably) Natural Selection, Biased Mutation, Genetic Drift, and Gene Flow, or TE(p)NSBMGDaGF, as it is properly identified in its full epicycular form.

Intelligent Genetic Manipulation is the mechanism that I propose. And yes, I believe that explains more of the observed evidence than TENS, since IGM is a scientific proposition, a readily observed action, and a successful predictive model, whereas TENS is a philosophical proposition, an unobserved process, and an unsuccessful predictive model.

Now, this does not provide any basis for assuming the existence of a Creator God, or even declaring that TENS did not actually take place. The logical fact of the matter is that even if TENS can be conclusively demonstrated to have taken place in various species, which has not happened despite more than 150 years of trying, that doesn’t necessarily mean the process was sufficient to produce Man. If one contemplates the biological differences between ape and man, the vast leap in cognitive capacity taking place in a relatively small sum of generational cycles from the proposed common ancestor in comparison with the timelines supposedly required for other, less complicated evolutionary changes, the logic suggests – though it does not prove – that some degree of purposeful genetic manipulation has likely taken place at various points in the origin of the species and the development of homo sapiens sapiens.

I’m not talking about Intelligent Design, but rather intelligent editing. And the interesting thing is that IGM should be an increasingly falsifiable concept as genetic science continues to improve. Only recently have we learned that junk DNA serves a purpose; even though we have sequenced various genomes, we haven’t yet understood how the code works or fully comprehended the various ways it can be manipulated. As our understanding grows, we should be able to develop an ability to recognize patterns that indicate purposeful alterations in the code have been made.

An Alternative Mechanism, 12 October 2012

Twelve years later, it is now clear that IGM is superior to the Theorum of Evolution by (probably) Natural Selection, Biased Mutation, Genetic Drift, and Gene Flow in every single way. It is not only not mathematically impossible, we know for certain it is possible because we already engage in purposeful genetic manipulation ourselves. IGM is not a philosophical tautology, it is an eminently falsifiable scientific hypothesis, as we are already developing mechanisms that provide the retroactive ability to see that a gene has been edited, and IGM already provides a better, more credible explanation for genetic anomalies such as human chromosome 2 (HSA2) that scientists presently imagine to have been caused by a single freak mutation that happened to fuse two primate chromosomes at the precise moment of a population bottleneck 740,000 years ago, a mutation that was so amazingly beneficial that it somehow managed to fixate through the entire human species at a rate much faster than Genghis Khan’s genetic lineage has been observed to propagate.

And if IGM does not address the question of the origin of life, well, neither does TE(p)NSBMGDaGF. And unlike TE(p)NSBMGDaGF, it even “predicts” the utility and significance of what was once erroneously labled “junk DNA” whereas all that TE(p)NSBMGDaGF ever “predicted” was the possibility of the existence of a rodent that had already been known to Man for centuries.

Biologists should not be the least bit reluctant to leave the useless theories of Neo-Darwinism behind or to abandon evolution by natural selection. To the contrary, we now have a growing body of scientific evidence that humanity is not, and never was, alone in the universe. And whoever, or whatever, the parties responsible may be, we know that they have at least a modicum of what appears to be beneficial interest in us, or they would not have manipulated our genes to enhance our cognition and self-awareness as they appear to have done.

On a philosophical note, I very much doubt it is a question of God or aliens. Because the answer, in all probability, will somehow involve both. We know that God works through men, even through the most unlikely of men. Logic therefore suggests that if aliens of any kind exist, God will work through them too.

“Yeah, I know, make sure it lays eggs, on it.”

DISCUSS ON SG

How Genghis Khan’s MITTENS Strangled Darwin

One of the reasons I occasionally find it profitable to engage with anklebiters is that they help me get a handle on what I need to do to bridge the communication gap with normal individuals. No offense, but I often can’t tell the difference between the average midwit and the average retard, or determine precisely where along the logic rollercoaster someone is going to fall off without being provided the assistance of some sort of safety rails keeping them on the track.

So, it was with a bit of chagrin that I realized how, despite my best efforts to make every element of my case for the Mathematical Impossibility of The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection (MITTENS) easily intelligible, I had made precisely the same mistake that the symposium physicists did in 1966. Which is to say, I was requiring my critics to possess an ability to make a correct logical leap that is observably beyond the ability of most people, and had thereby rendered what should have been an incontrovertible argument theoretically contestable in the eyes of the average individual. MPAI strikes again.

Fortunately, a Darwinian true believer who lacked the necessary ability chose to inform me on Gab that the math in MITTENS was both “bad” and “wrong” without bothering to correct it.

I’m no biologist, and I do enjoy math. It pains me to see bad math, which is the only reason I keep on poking at this. Ultimately, it’s not even a math error, the error is in the priors. Asserting that 1600 fixations per generation is the highest possible fixation rate is the root.

First, it’s worth pointing out that setting a ceiling of 1600 fixations per generation would not be an error, and in fact is considerably higher than the highest possible fixation rate ever imagined by anyone. Second, I responded to him by pointing out that since he had somehow managed to reverse the relationship between generations and fixations, and was therefore asserting that it was reasonable to imagine a blistering and hitherto-unseen super-parallel rate of 1,600 fixations per generation, it was unlikely that he had truly been able to detect a mathematical error in what, after all, is some very basic math.

It will probably not surprise you to know that this obvious error neither stopped him nor slowed him down in the slightest:

If I said 1600 per generation, that was a typo. I am flawed, I do make the occasional mistake. That’s the rate for bacteria. Using it for chimps requires more than simply asserting it is so. I will concede that the math itself is correct. Vox is capable of multiplication. The analysis is flawed because the input is incorrect.

It is like taking the top speed of a snail (Best I could find is 0.2 miles per hour for the giant African land snail) and using that to claim we never went to the moon. 226000 miles / 0.2 miles per hour = 1,130,000 hours = 129 years. It has been less than 129 years since the Apollo program, so we can’t have made it there yet.

If you use the wrong starting values, the math leads you astray.

I responded by observing that now he had reversed the appropriate analogy as well. My argument for the mathematical impossibility of the theory of evolution by natural selection is much more akin to pointing out that since the maximum speed of a Moon rocket is the 24,791 mph recorded by Apollo 10, and since it took three days, three hours and 49 minutes for Apollo 11 to reach the Moon, any claim that a Giant African Land Snail travelling at 0.2 mph had flown to the Moon under its own power in less than 24 hours must be false.

This second correction somehow did not dissuade him from continuing to claim that while my math was admittedly correct, the mathematical argument it supported was still “weak”.

The rate of mutation is typically cited per individual per generation. The rate of fixation is of course a population-wide measure. The experiment in the 2009 Nature paper measured a fixation rate of 1 fixation per 1600 generations. The bacteria in the experiment have a rate of mutation of about 1/1000 per generation per individual.

The rate of fixation of neutral mutations is proportional to the rate of mutation (and with certain simplifying assumptions, is equal to the rate of mutation per individual per generation).

The rate of mutation per generation per individual in chimps and humans is on the rough order of 30, over four orders of magnitude higher than that of the bacteria. The rate of fixation will thus be proportionately higher. Using the correct rate of fixation produces numbers comparable to the ones evolutionary geneticists use in molecular clock calculations.

This is why Vox’s “mathematical” argument is weak – it’s using an invalid prior to come to an incorrect conclusion.

I therefore observed that in his attempted defense of neo-Darwinism, he was asserting that mutations fix four orders of magnitude faster ACROSS THE ENTIRE GLOBALLY-DISTRIBUTED SPECIES in both humans and chimpanzees alike than across a small population of laboratory bacteria, which is total nonsense because the fixation rate in laboratory bacteria in the 2009 study published in NATURE is the fastest ever observed by scientists.

I also pointed out his extrapolation that more mutations occurring in a growing, geographically-distributed, and more genetically complex species necessarily means that species will fixate much more quickly than the simpler species was a logical error. To be more precise, his baseless assertion was absolute and utter nonsense; since chimpanzees and humans are far more widely distributed than bacteria living in a single petri dish, any advantageous mutations making an appearance will tend to fixate much more slowly in their populations than in the bacteria.

In fact, the theory of natural selection even suggests that what is an advantageous mutation in one geographical area might well be a disadvantage elsewhere, thereby preventing its fixation. He was literally appealing to his own imagination rather than math, science, or any observable evidence, and he proved quite willing to continue standing upon that imaginary foundation.

Your math is still wrong. Fixation proceeds in parallel. The rate of fixation is equal to the rate of mutation, and the latter can be measured. (Former’s a touch harder, but some bacterial experiments have done it, and confirm the rate.) The rate of mutation needed for the genetic clock is within a factor of two of what’s observed now.

He was, of course, incorrect, as he was citing Wikipedia or some other Internet source without understanding it. As it happens, according to the scientific papers, the rate of fixation is absolutely not equal to the rate of mutation for a) any non-static population, or, b) any beneficial mutation, which happens to be the only kind of mutation that is relevant to the topic of fixation. Also, my critic apparently did not know that the original average of 1,600 generations per fixation reported in the NATURE study specifically included several mutations fixed in parallel.

However, his stubborn insistence that my argument was insufficiently conclusive made me realize that I had unwittingly gifted him the out to which he was clinging by erroneously expecting him to be able to accept what I considered to be obvious: I was assuming that the fastest mutational fixations ever observed in laboratory bacteria were faster, in generational terms, than any fixation occurring in a more genetically complicated species dwelling in the wild. Just as relying upon probability rendered the physicists’ math-based arguments too difficult for the innumerate biologists of the 1966 symposium to understand and accept, my failure to provide a specific example of natural fixation rates among species with higher mutation rates gave my logic-challenged critic sufficient cover to retreat to an ontological argumentum ad imaginariam.

And while I am aware of no substantive studies on mutational fixation rates in humans, which is understandable given the challenge presented by the time frames involved, there does happen to be the famous case of Genghis Khan, who is popularly supposed to have been the male ancestor for nearly one-quarter of the human race. Upon review, this turned out to be a fairly serious exaggeration of his actual genetic influence, but it proved useful nonetheless. And, better yet, his genetic legacy had already been analyzed in terms of mutational fixation!

The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols: a groundbreaking 2003 historical genetics study.

When sampling DNA from 16 populations across Asia, researchers were surprised to find that nearly one in 12 men on the continent shared an unusual Y-chromosomal lineage – one that they said likely came from Genghis Khan. The genetic line showed that about 8 percent of men in the region of the former Mongol empire, and therefore about one in 200 worldwide, share one single male ancestor.

This rise in frequency, if spread evenly over ∼34 generations, would require an average increase by a factor of ∼1.36 per generation and is thus comparable to the most extreme selective events observed in natural populations, such as the spread of melanic moths in 19th-century England in response to industrial pollution (Edleston 1865).

Note two things before we get to the math. First, based on the 2003 date of publication, the researchers were using a period of 23.44 years per generation, distinct from the 20 years per generation I’ve been using. They also appear to have used a slightly starting date for unknown reasons. But these differences are irrelevant and I only mention them to explain the different base number of generations: 40.85 vs ~34. Second, pay very close attention to this phrase: “is thus comparable to the most extreme selective events observed in natural populations”.

Genghis Khan’s third son, and successor, was born in 1186. It took 817 years, or 40.85 generations of 20 years, for his father’s genes to propagate sufficiently to reach 0.5 percent (the 1 in 200 worldwide figure reported in the study expressed in percentage terms) of a species-wide fixation. At this rate, which is “comparable to the most extreme selective events observed in natural populations”, it would take 8,170 generations (40.85 generations x 200) and 163,400 years to fixate a hypothetical “Genghis Khan gene” across the human population, although just to be clear, there is no evidence that there is any genuine mutational advantage to being descended from the individual who was the greatest warlord in human history as well as one of its more conspicuous collectors of fertile young concubines. This application of sexual selection, however one-sided, rather than natural selection per se, means that 8,170 generations per fixation is almost certainly a very conservative estimate.

This means that the fastest observed rate of practical partial fixation in the natural human population has run at 19.58 percent of the fastest-ever rate of observed fixation in laboratory bacteria. As the logic used to construct MITTENS correctly suggested, the bacteria in the lab have been observed to fixate mutations at a rate at least five times faster than the human population has ever been observed to do.

Since evolution by natural selection has now been reduced to purely ontological arguments, what sort of fitness advantage can you possibly imagine that would be more powerful than the sexual-selection advantage the literally rapacious Khan of Khans himself was historically known to utilize?

I’ll lay out the math in analogical terms that everyone can easily grasp in a future post, but for now, the genetic legacy of Genghis Khan should suffice to address any remaining structural objections to the legitimacy of MITTENS and its conclusive falsification of the Neo-Darwinian synthesis.

UPDATE: You might think I’m exaggerating the stupidity and the innumeracy of the biologists. I’m not. They legitimately do not comprehend the existence of the concept of an “average”, much less have the ability to grasp MITTENS. This is an actual quote from one self-appointed defender of Darwin:

“This so-called math isn’t necessary to evolution since there is no one set speed of evolution or even of mutation.“

DISCUSS ON SG

The Vacuous Rhetoric of Evolution

This is a quote from the 1966 Philadelphia symposium, but it is precisely the same sort of argument that any substantive critic of Neo-Darwinism keeps running into from the Neo-Darwinians:

Combinations of different genes occur such that every individual is a unique com­bination, and the selective assay of the value of each random mutation is performed simultaneously in this framework for thou­sands of mutations at a time. The accep­tance of the neo-Darwinian concept of evo­lution appears to be eminently valid on this basis. However, a critical feature is the occurrence of mechanisms for genetic com­bination and recombination, and a major criticism of the neo-Darwinian concept which has been raised at this meeting is premised on the lack of such a mechanism in the initial steps of the evolution of a “sense” sequence of a polypeptide or poly­nucleotide from an initially “nonsense” sequence. It does not, however, seem an ex­treme extrapolation from the known facts of nucleic acid replication and transcription to envisage that combination and recom­bination are inherent features of polynu­cleotides, and the evolution of “sense” sequences then becomes a process of reason­able probability.
– Dr. Alex Fraser, Professor of Genetics, University of California Davis, California

Let’s break the argument down into its component parts:

  1. There is no mechanism. This is readily admitted.
  2. This lack of a mechanism renders the hypothesis impossible.
  3. But it doesn’t strike the Neo-Darwinian true believer to be an extreme extrapolation to imagine what this nonexistent, never-observed mechanism could be if it existed, which it doesn’t.
  4. And if we simply imagine that this nonexistent mechanism existed, then the proposed process that requires it in order to function becomes theoretically possible.
  5. Therefore, the process works as imagined

What sort of philosophical ineptitude and logical retardery is this? Who is stupid enough to accept this as a legitimate argument, let alone an established fact? This isn’t science, reason, logic, or math, it’s just maleducated handwaving combined with wishful thinking. They’re playing poker with Uno cards.

Evolution isn’t science. It isn’t even philosophy or religion. It’s just the vacuous rhetoric of the innumerate, as even its leading champions were forced to admit at the end of the 1966 symposium.

I hope the biologists have shown the physicists that evolutionary theories are not totally vacuous. I think the physicists have shown us that they are certainly as yet very incomplete, and I think we are ready to realize they are very incomplete.
– Dr. C. H. Waddington, Institute of Animal Genetics, Edinburgh

DISCUSS ON SG

Dunning-Kruger Science

The fundamental problem in dealing with scientists in general and biologists in particular is that they literally do not know how stupid they are. Very, very few, if any, of them are even National Merit-level intelligence, which is to say they are not only sub-geniuses, they are relatively low-level midwits. And this was true of them sixty years ago; imagine how much dumber today’s diversity scientists are, especially given their decidedly-inferior modern educations:

The report of the exchange is fascinating, not just because of the substance of the mathematical challenge, but even more because of the logic of the Darwinist response. For example, the mathematician D.S. Ulam argued that it was highly improbable that the eye could have evolved by the accumulation of small mutations, because the number of mutations would have to be so large and the time available was not nearly long enough for them to appear. Sir Peter Medawar and C.H. Waddington responded that Ulam was doing his science backwards; the fact was that the eye had evolved and therefore the mathematical difficulties must only be apparent. Ernst Mayer observed that Ulam’s calculations were based on assumptions that might be unfounded, and concluded that ‘Somehow or other by adjusting these figures we will come out all right. We are comforted by the fact that evolution has occurred.’

“The Darwinists were trying to be reasonable, but it was as if Ulam had presented equations proving that gravity is too weak a force to prevent us all from floating off into space. Darwinism to them was not a theory open to refutation but a fact to be accounted for, at least until the mathematicians could produce an acceptable alternative. The discussion became particularly heated after a French mathematician named Schützenberger concluded that ‘there is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged within the current conception of biology.’ C.H. Waddington thought he saw where this reasoning was headed, and retorted that ‘Your argument is simply that life must have come about by special creation.’ Schützenberger (and anonymous voices from the audience) shouted ‘No!,’ but in fact the mathematicians did not present an alternative.”

Phillip Johnson, Darwin on Trial, 1991

Now, if it’s not immediately apparent how fundamentally retarded this scientific illogic is, imagine that instead of debating the validity of a scientific theory, these gentlemen were in a court of law, and that Waddington was the prosecutor, Schützenberger the defense attorney, and Sir Peter Medawar the judge.

Schützenberger: Your honor, my client could not have committed the attack on the late victim, which the surveillance cameras confirm took place in Philadelphia at 10 PM on April 15th. We have here an airline ticket from Philadelphia to Miami on April 15th that left Philadelphia at 7 PM and landed in Miami at 9 PM, affadavits from fellow passengers and airline stewardesses testifying to my client’s presence on the flight to Miami, and security camera footage from the Miami Hilton at 10 PM, all of which clearly proves my client is not guilty because he was not in Philadelphia at the time the murder took place.

C.H. Waddington: So your argument is simply that the victim was killed for his money!

Schützenberger: No, that’s not my argument. I am not making any argument about the motivations for the murder and I don’t know who was responsible for it. My argument is that my client did not kill the victim. My client could not have killed the victim. It’s not possible for my client to have killed the victim, because the murder took place in Philadelphia at a time when it has been conclusively demonstrated that he was in Miami!

C.H. Waddington: But if the accused didn’t kill the victim, who did? Who is the culprit? What’s the alternative?

Schützenberger: I have no idea. I don’t have an alternative.

C.H. Waddington: Your honor will note that I’ve asked for an alternative theory and the defense refuses to provide one.

Sir Peter: Noted. Is that the best you can do, counselor? Do you have any alternative to the active theory, any alternative at all? I will remind you that the active theory is a consensus that is widely supported by the scientific community, a consensus based on the assumption that your client did, in fact, kill the victim.

Schützenberger: Finding the actual killer is not my job, your honor. I’m a defense attorney, not a detective.

Sir Peter: The counselor will answer the question.

Schützenberger: No, your honor, I do not have an alternative theory.

Sir Peter: Very well. Since no alternative theories have been presented, I have no choice but to pronounce the accused guilty. Bailiff, take him away!

That would be totally absurd, doesn’t it? An absolute parody of justice, truth, and reason. No prosecutor would even attempt to advance such an obviously stupid argument in front of any judge. And yet, that is absolutely, 100-percent confirmed to have been the actual state of what passes for scientific thinking on the subject of evolution for the last sixty years. Don’t ever give scientists even a modicum of intellectual respect on the basis of their profession. Not only have they not earned it, they have repeatedly and reliably demonstrated that their level of philosophical analysis and their ability to discern truth is considerably below that of trial lawyers and public defenders.

Lest you think I exaggerate, consider the attempt of one true Darwinian believer to defend the science on the basis of criticizing my math, which apparently pains him, even though he admits there is no mathematical error.

I’m no biologist, and I do enjoy math. It pains me to see bad math, which is the only reason I keep on poking at this. Ultimately, it’s not even a math error, the error is in the priors. Asserting that 1600 fixations per generation is the highest possible fixation rate is the root.

The reader will, I hope, note that the actual number concerned is not “1600 fixations per generation” but rather “Generations per fixed mutation: 1600”.

BACTERIA
Years: 3,800,000,000
Years per generation: 0.000071347 (37.5 mins per generation)
Generations per fixed mutation: 1600
Years per fixed mutation: 0.114
Maximum fixed mutations: 33,288,000,916

Source: Sequencing of 19 whole genomes detected 25 mutations that were fixed in the 40,000 generations of the experiment.
NATURE, 2009

Maximal Mutations, Vox Day, February 7, 2019

I’ll admit that I probably use the description “reprehensibly stupid” too liberally, but this sort of multi-level stupidity really is reprehensible.

When Neo-Darwinians attempt to math.

DISCUSS ON SG

A Bold Beginning

Thanks to one of our international men of mystery, I’m able to bring you the opening remarks from the chairman of the 1966 Philadelphia symposium on the mathematical challenges to Neo-Darwinism that long preceded my own conclusive mathematical disproof of evolution by natural selection, regardless of the Dawkinsian “probably” that has recently been appended to what is now more formally known as the Theorum of Evolution by (probably) Natural Selection, Sexual Selection, Biased Mutation, Genetic Drift, and Gene Flow.

Ladies and gentlemen: I want to make just a few introductory remarks. I think it is the distin­guishing mark of all true biologists as opposed to mere sectarian specialists that they are deeply interested in the mechanism of evolution. As Dr. Kaplan has explained, the immediate cause of this conference is a pretty widespread sense of dissatisfaction about what has come to be thought of as the accepted evolutionary theory in the English-speaking world, the so-called neo-Darwinian Theory. This dissatisfaction has been expressed from three quarters and is not only scientific.

First of all, religious: Where once the complaint was that evolution happened at all, now the complaint generally is that it happens without Divine motivation. Many of you will have read with incredulous horror the kind of pious bunk written by Teilhard de Chardin on this subject, if Professor Schultzenberger will excuse my putting it that way.

Then, there are philosophical or methodological objections to evolutionary theory. They have been very well voiced by Professor Karl Popper — that the current neo-Darwinian Theory has the methodological defect of explaining too much. It is too difficult to imagine or envisage an evolutionary episode which could not be explained by the formulae of neo-Darwinism.

Finally — and these are really, I think, the only objections that should concern us — there are objections made by fellow scien­tists who feel that, in the current theory, something is missing, and we look forward to hearing their formulation of what, precisely, is missing. These objections to current neo-Darwinian theory are very widely held among biologists generally; and we must on no account, I think, make light of them. The very fact that we having this conference is evidence that we are not making light of them.

Sir Peter Medawar, National Institute for Medical Research, 24 April 1966

It’s rather remarkable that within ten years of these professional biologists publicly declaring that they must, no on account, make light of the mathematical objections to their pet theory, my high school biology teacher was telling me that the science was settled and no intelligent, educated person would even consider doubting the sacred Neo-Darwinian dogma.

How things change! Thanks to developments in genetic science, we now have conclusive mathematical evidence of the absolute impossibility of both Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian evolutions. The hoary old dragon of Darwin has been slain, once and for all. It may not have stopped twitching yet, and the faithful are still hoping against hope for a revisionist third coming, but any impartial and sufficiently numerate observer will admit that it is clearly pining for the fjords.

DISCUSS ON SG