Spacetime is just a headset: An interview with Donald Hoffman

Do you want to elaborate or supply a link?

David

A rebuttal by Gregory Lang and Amber Rice of Lehigh University.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/.../evo.13710

~~ Paul

A rebuttal by Gregory Lang and Amber Rice of Lehigh University.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/.../evo.13710

~~ Paul

What I notice about that 'rebuttal' is that unlike Behe's book, which almost totally avoids the rhetoric of creation, the whole thing is polemical. It is also particularly hard to discuss because it is an image of some text - you can't easily select quotes to comment on.

This is 2023 - surely we can get a machine-readable form of text!

I challenge anyone here, it doesn't even read like a dispassionate scientific review - because, I suppose, it isn't!

David

What I notice about that 'rebuttal' is that unlike Behe's book, which almost totally avoids the rhetoric of creation, the whole thing is polemical. It is also particularly hard to discuss because it is an image of some text - you can't easily select quotes to comment on.

This is 2023 - surely we can get a machine-readable form of text!

I challenge anyone here, it doesn't even read like a dispassionate scientific review - because, I suppose, it isn't!

David

Oh, sorry, I wasn't expecting you to try to read it. I just think it's amusing that his department folks disagree with him. There are other reviews of the book floating around. But, as I said, I don't really care. If he suddenly publishes something that destroys evolution, I'm sure I'll hear about it.

Does he have a mathematical proof that evolution degrades to a greater degree than it creates?

~~ Paul

Does he have a mathematical proof that evolution degrades to a greater degree than it creates?

Basically yes. It goes like this. Suppose for example that malaria became common over the whole earth. Natural selection would then pick out the people who had the sickle cell mutation in their haemoglobin gene, because that would protect them partially against malaria.
Given time, this might wipe out the optimal haemoglobin gene - everyone would have the defective gene. At this point, humanity would have lost a vital part of its genome. Something like that presumably happened to cause us to lose our ability to create vitamin C. It is only a very simple molecule and yet unlike most animals we can't make it.

Over time, evolution of that type robs us of our ability to cope with changes in the environment. He claims to see exactly this phenomenon in the successive breeding experiments performed by Lenski. Honestly, why don't you read his book - it not expensive.

David

Basically yes. It goes like this. Suppose for example that malaria became common over the whole earth. Natural selection would then pick out the people who had the sickle cell mutation in their haemoglobin gene, because that would protect them partially against malaria.
Given time, this might wipe out the optimal haemoglobin gene - everyone would have the defective gene. At this point, humanity would have lost a vital part of its genome. Something like that presumably happened to cause us to lose our ability to create vitamin C. It is only a very simple molecule and yet unlike most animals we can't make it.

Over time, evolution of that type robs us of our ability to cope with changes in the environment. He claims to see exactly this phenomenon in the successive breeding experiments performed by Lenski. Honestly, why don't you read his book - it not expensive.

David

You're proposing a scenario that didn't happen, so I'm not sure what the point is.

As far as vitamin C is concerned, yes, we can't make it. But it doesn't matter because we can consume it. So the gene is unnecessary.

So this is all lovely, but what does he say about all the useful genes that we do have? They just poofed! into existence and since then it's been a slow downhill ride?

I really have no interest in reading his book.

~~ Paul

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...112424.htm

You're proposing a scenario that didn't happen, so I'm not sure what the point is.

As far as vitamin C is concerned, yes, we can't make it. But it doesn't matter because we can consume it. So the gene is unnecessary.

Obviously, but it reduced our fitness to absorb change. For example our withstanding the effects of a long sea voyage. or perhaps the effect of a global famine caused by a large volcanic eruption - that gene was useful!

So this is all lovely, but what does he say about all the useful genes that we do have? They just poofed! into existence and since then it's been a slow downhill ride?

Obviously, the DI will claim that God made those genes, I'd just say it is a great mystery - 'poofed' if you like!

The crucial point is the creation of genes de-novo for new proteins faces an immense combinatorial explosion, even after you factor in the large number of organisms and the geological amounts of time.

However what a mutation can do is break a gene. It may not even matter where you break it, the probability of that is vastly more favourable than the probability of creating a new gene by successive random mutations.

If you break a gene, paradoxically that can be useful in some situations. For example, a mutation can damage the haemoglobin gene and that causes sickle cell anaemia. However that change also confers resistance to malaria. Thus you can see how the body can evolve to resist that disease in a Darwinian sense. However, evolution of that type (Behe calls it Devolution) is self-limiting because the original stock of genes diminishes every time that mechanism is invoked.

I really have no interest in reading his book.

~~ Paul

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...112424.htm

Your link tells me that humans have continued to evolve after we split from chimps - well big deal, but was there remotely enough time for that process?

Remember, Darwinian evolution requires that each step confers a fitness advantage on the organism. The problem is that an incomplete protein string confers nothing to the organism because you need the whole molecule for it to work.

If you don't read Behe's book, it is hard to discuss it further.

https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/27735/

David