mammuthus
Posts: 13
Joined: June 2009
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The latest update is that Sanford will be engaged in a one on one discussion at TWeb with Steve Schaffner:
| Quote | All right; I just finished responding back to Dr. Sanford. He appears to be willing to engage sfs1 in a discussion on TWeb. He agrees that a one-on-one discussion is best, since he prefers to keep the discussion from being polarized.
I told Dr. Sanford that I would initiate the process of setting up a Basketball Court thread but I'm not sure how to do that; any long-timers here know how that works? We could use this thread as a commentary thread, I think.
This has the potential to be really interesting. Dr. Sanford seems to be very genuine and polite; I think we've got a good chance to sort out some of MENDEL's problems without getting lost in the weeds.
Dr. Sanford permitted me to post our e-mail exchange; the emails are attached. This is the part that concerns MENDEL:
| Quote | As you know, Mendel has enormous user-specificity. It is literally a genetic accounting program, and honestly takes the input parameters which the users chooses, and processes them through the biological mechanics of mutation, selection, meiosis, gamete fusion, and formation of the next generation.
The default settings are just a starting point for research. If you put in the right parameters you can get extreme evolution. However, we argue that realistic settings always yield degeneration. This can be a point of discussion.
In regrad to your own experiments, I would like to point out that
biologists realize that the distribution of good and bad mutations are not symetrical. There are far fewer beneficials, and the range of beneficials is different - it is generally acknowledged that beneficials have a lower mean effect (is is harder to make major improvements in a highly optimized system). If you go to the mutation specifications, you can specify a high maximal beneficial effect - even up to 1.0. The default is .001 - meaning that a maximal beneficial effect is small, increasing fitness by 0.1%. A setting of 1.0 means that a single mutation can double fitness - creating as much biological functionality as the entire rest of the genome. This type of setting has many biological and logical ramifications that require quite a bit of discussion. In an accounting program, a single mega-beneficial can ALWAYS compensate for any amount of genetic damage. But is that realistic? |
A big thanks to sfs1 for agreeing to dialog with Dr. Sanford when he comes to TWeb. This should be an illuminating discussion and a great addition to the stuff we've already figured out.
—Sam |
I think you'll have to register at TWeb to view the debate when it comes up online.
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