ericmurphy
Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005
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| Quote (afdave @ Nov. 30 2006,13:22) | Faid... | Quote | | Now are you going to contend that "no working engineer" would be interested in transmitting an encrypted data stream that is almost perfectly random? |
I didn't say that. I said no working engineer talks about transmitting white noise as a signal. You and Eric morphed the original conversation into this stuff about encryption. |
Dave, white noise is an example of a nearly-perfectly-random signal. An encrypted file is another example of a nearly-perfectly-random signal. An engineer would be unlikely to be able to distinguish between the two. We haven't "morphed" the conversation into anything. It's right where it always has been: your utter misunderstanding of information theory.
| Quote | | Now ... if you have the intellectual guts ... get back to to topic at hand ... Biological Information. And get off that silly branch that Eric is on of Shannon Information and Encryption and such. |
Dave, when you establish that you even understand what "biological information" is, then you can have a rational discussion about it. As has been pointed out, Crick's definition of "biological information" does not set forth any methodology for measuring the quantity of biological information. Without that metric, you have no basis for saying whether any process increases, decreases, or leaves unchanged the amount of biological information. Therefore, your whole argument that mutations cannot increase the amount of biological information is utterly without foundation, because you cannot tell if biological information has increased, decreased, or remained the same.
| Quote | GoP... | Quote | I think the most fruitful class of mutations on average is gene duplication. Gene duplication + natural selection seems to be a very good way to increase the complexity of the genome. You apparently think that this process does not increase biological information. Would you mind explaining why? I don't recall a creationist addressing this kind of mutation in a coherent way.
I really don't understand how this event could not increase information. |
This was covered in response to Chris Hyland's post about the supposed 8 alternative mechanisms for evolution, one of which was gene duplication. Please download the thread and do a search beginning just before Thanksgiving and you will find it. If you can't, let me know. |
It wasn't "covered" anywhere, Dave. Feel free to whip out a permalink or a quote if you think it has. You still have provided no support for your claim that a gene duplication followed by subsequent mutation cannot increase the amount of biological information. Once again, you're claiming you've done something you have not in fact done. This is essentially a lie, Dave.
| Quote | Eric... | Quote | | The vast majority of mutations are exactly neutral in that they do absolutely nothing. |
Wrong. Read Kimura. |
I've read it, and it remains true that "neutral" mutations are exactly what they say they are: neutral. They are also the vast majority of mutations. Kimura says nothing to contradict this simple, well-known fact.
Deleterious, neutral, beneficial mutations. They all exist, and you have provided absolutely no evidence to the contrary. You still, after all this time, cannot distinguish between "most" and "all," or between "few" and "none."
Read a real textbook on genetics, Dave, not quotemines from AiG.
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2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
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