Blowing Up Darwin

[Fort Fun Indiana]

My position is it is all a theory.

Which is the highest status any scientific explanation can attain.

So you're not throwing the shade you think you are throwing. At all. It just shows you don't understand what a theory is or how science works.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Seeding from an unknown space origin for one.

Panspermia?

Then that means life formed elsewhere.
So you are still left having to explain abiogenesis.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Darwin was right about one thing. Creatures over time do evolve.

Then, given enough time, a species would evolve into a different species.

Unless you have a mechanism that somehow stops evolution. Which, you do not.

You just admitted the truth of the entire theory.

Thanks.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Unfortunately, students as every level come away believing that Darwin's theory has been proven and should be considered as fact.

Because it is a fact.

Yes, theories can also be facts.

 

[Leo123]

No one is an expert. There are only people who are willing to learn, and people who aren't. People who are willing to discover, and people who refuse to.

Your goal is to learn "more" than I know. I've been studying this stuff for 50 years, but it won't take you that long. I had to start from scratch, you don't have to.

All you have to do is jettison your preconceptions. Much of what you think you know, is simply wrong. And you can prove that, to yourself and to others.

One of the things I've learned, is that life isn't a "thing". It's a continuum, a dynamic. If you want to understand it, you have to understand dynamics. Dynamics isn't a "thing" either, it's a process.

Dynamics is great stuff. For instance - when you study dynamics you learn about Euler's equation. e ^ iπ is one of the strangest formulas ever. e is compound interest, π is a circle, and i is the square root of -1. They're related. Not only are they related, they're the very essence of physics. Nothing would work without this relationship. "Why" is it? No one knows. It's just a universal relationship. Don't ask why, just use it. Use it to create life. Let someone else worry about "why". "Why" is the domain of mathematics, it has something to do with number theory and the structure of numbers. I don't worry about that stuff, I let the brainiac mathematicians worry about it. As a biologist I just have to know "that" it works, not how or why. And since I study and learn, I'm completely confident "that" it works. In 50 years I've never once seen it "not work". But I've seen it work in lots of different ways. It's in Schrodinger's equation. It's in dynamics. It's in the mapping of the retina to the brain. It's in electronics, in biology, in chemistry, it's everywhere. This is what science is about -confidence. You build confidence by studying and learning, by repeating experiments yourself and by letting other people repeat them. In 50 years no one's been able to show me a counterexample where Euler's formula doesn't work. I'll keep an open mind, maybe someday someone can show me one. But I'll be very surprised if it ever happens. At this moment I have a lot of confidence that the relationship works and it's somehow a part of the natural universe.

Life is the same way. Like you, I was once a skeptic - I didn't have much confidence and it showed in my communications. After 50 years in the field though, I gained confidence, and now I can communicate that confidence to others. It doesn't make me an expert. It just makes me a working scientist. I'll be very grateful if someone proves me wrong, because it'll mean they know more than I do, which'll motivate me to learn more.

At this moment, what I want to communicate to you is "go learn dynamics". You can't understand life without it - and once you learn it you'll have a much better understanding of what life really is. It's not a "thing", it's a process. It's a process built on another process. Maybe there's a "thing" underlying it all, who knows. But a PROCESS doesn't require a beginning, and it doesn't require an end. Because it's a relationship, not a "thing". The people who think life requires a beginning are confused - because they think life is a "thing". But it's not, it's a process. It's a dynamic, which is a relationship. It's like Euler's formula, it doesn't require a beginning or an end, it just "is".

Did tou watch the Dr. Tour video I posted a while ago? He’s in the fields of genetics and biology and has been studying origin of life and lecturing for years. I never said life was a thing. From what you have posted, you are the one who should jettison preconceptions.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Did tou watch the Dr. Tour video I posted a while ago? He’s in the fields of genetics and biology and has been studying origin of life and lecturing for years. I never said life was a thing. From what you have posted, you are the one who should jettison preconceptions.

Dr. Tour has been discredited and embarrassed over and over and over.

 

[Leo123]

too many questions.

Elements attract and react because their atoms are trying to achieve a more stable state by rearranging their outermost electrons (valence electrons)

that prokaryotic cell has a tail to swim in order to get to the things it needs to live.

You missed the point. Start with why they would want to achieve a stable state. You are only citing observations not the underlying reason. Why are these things programmed to do what you said?

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

You missed the point. Start with why they would want to achieve a stable state. You are only citing observations not the underlying reason. Why are these things programmed to do what you said?

They aren't.

Claims presented without evidence can be 200% refuted and dismissed just as easily.

"Nope"

Refuted.

 

[scruffy]

Did tou watch the Dr. Tour video I posted a while ago? He’s in the fields of genetics and biology and has been studying origin of life and lecturing for years. I never said life was a thing. From what you have posted, you are the one who should jettison preconceptions.

I'm well familiar with Dr Tour from many years ago.

Did you check into attractors? You're still asking why a stable state, which tells me you didn't.

You should familiarize yourself with the science before trying to denigrate it. Attractors are why. In the old days they used to call it "lower energy states". Times have changed. The new quantum materials can be coerced into higher energy states because of the attractors.

Biologists study this because the same principles apply to the nucleation of DNA. Which doesn't require proteins, only chance and time.

We agree that there is structure in the universe and in biology, right?

You say it's indicative of intelligence, but I claim you're using an anthropomorphic definition of intelligence. I'm trying to show you a way you can get the same structure with a different definition of intelligence. I claim the intelligence is in numbers and relationships, and the complexity follows naturally. I learned about this from neural networks, which are self organizing, based on only the tiniest but of pre-wiring. The intelligence just says "travel 3 feet and turn right", and the rest follows automatically.

 

[Foxfyre]

Then, given enough time, a species would evolve into a different species.

Unless you have a mechanism that somehow stops evolution. Which, you do not.

You just admitted the truth of the entire theory.

Thanks.

Not really. You can't say I admitted anything when you fail to also acknowledge all the variables, all the possibilities, all the things we don't know, all the gaps in the paleontological record.

I am not ready to throw Darwin out entirely because I think his theory merits consideration within the whole of science. My only problem are with those who insist that Darwin is the whole story because I also think that that is far from the reality.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

But none of this is science.

Science is something you do.

Writing articles in a magazine is not science. Getting on TV with an opinion is not science.

I'll give you an example.

Darwin himself, coined the phrase "survival of the fittest". We now know, that this is not an accurate conclusion based on the data. Because, the term "fittest" is inaccurate.

The SCIENCE says there are niches, and any organism that fills a niche can survive. It has nothing to do with "fitness", rather, it has to do with the compatibility between the organism and the niche.

This is why a study of catastrophe theory is helpful, because the interaction between organisms and niches is formulated in terms of the branch of mathematics called "dynamics".

Simple dynamics are linear, for example you have a pendulum, or a mass on a spring, that kind of thing. We solve these using LaPlace's equation and etc (because fundamentally they obey "conservation laws").

But biological evolution is fundamentally nonlinear, the dynamics are more complicated. Catastrophe Theory is all about nonlinear dynamics. One of its biggest successes is solving chaotic systems, where for example "the butterfly flapping it's wings in Montana causes the typhoon in Malaysia".

Biological evolution is sometimes chaotic, because there are gazillions of interacting dynamics. Even a single nerve cell is highly nonlinear, and when you put hundreds of them together and try to describe the "system dynamics" you find that the collection can instantly transition from brain waves to an unsynchronized state and back again.

Such transitions are what is described by catastrophe theory. It is essentially "complex high dimensional dynamics".

You've probably heard of the computer "game of life", where you have foxes, chickens, and corn, and you try to predict what the biosphere looks like at some future time. This is a great and simple example of where catastrophe theory can be helpful . Because normally, you have a population "cycle", where the numbers of foxes and chickens varies smoothly depending on the food supply. But sometimes, you get a "cusp", where your system behavior kind of falls off a cliff, so to speak. It might happen if you run out of corn one day because there are too many chickens - and then the chickens die because they can't eat, and then the foxes die because there's not enough chickens anymore.

So in this game, the chickens have a niche, and the foxes have a niche. It has nothing to do with "fitness", instead it has to do with the stability of the niches. When they become unstable, you get a catastrophe, which means "a sudden change in system dynamics".

The appearance of a new species, in biology, is "a sudden change in system dynamics".

Science Is for Suckers

But what you are describing is where they fit in, at the niche. High IQs don't fit in at school, which is brainwashing, exploitative, humiliating, and pacifying. They'd fit best ("fittest") applying their brains to real-life situations. A seed doesn't grow in sand.

Their inferior-IQ bosses make the excuse that nerds are impractical and wouldn't know how to market their ideas. Bill Gates disproved that when he quit being a nerd pushover after being paid less than 1% of what he saved a company.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Not really.

You sure did. You admitted evolution changes the genetics of populations of species over time.

Unless you propose a mechanism to stop that -- which, you will not -- those changes will eventually result in a new species. Inevitably, given time.

You just aren't savvy enough or well versed enough in basic logic to understand you just admitted that the fundamental tenet of evolution is true.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Explain how something came from nothing.

After you.

Tell us how your magical sky daddy came from nothing.

 

[Foxfyre]

You sure did. You admitted evolution changes the genetics of populations of species over time.

Unless you propose a mechanism to stop that -- which, you will not -- those changes will eventually result in a new species. Inevitably, given time.

You just aren't savvy enough or well versed enough in basic logic to understand you just admitted that the fundamental tenet of evolution is true.

Until you can quote me accurately do find someone else to pester but have a lovely afternoon and evening.

 

[Leo123]

I'm well familiar with Dr Tour from many years ago.

Did you check into attractors? You're still asking why a stable state, which tells me you didn't.

You should familiarize yourself with the science before trying to denigrate it. Attractors are why. In the old days they used to call it "lower energy states". Times have changed. The new quantum materials can be coerced into higher energy states because of the attractors.

Biologists study this because the same principles apply to the nucleation of DNA. Which doesn't require proteins, only chance and time.

We agree that there is structure in the universe and in biology, right?

You say it's indicative of intelligence, but I claim you're using an anthropomorphic definition of intelligence. I'm trying to show you a way you can get the same structure with a different definition of intelligence. I claim the intelligence is in numbers and relationships, and the complexity follows naturally. I learned about this from neural networks, which are self organizing, based on only the tiniest but of pre-wiring. The intelligence just says "travel 3 feet and turn right", and the rest follows automatically.

I wasn’t aware I was denigrating anything, that is your opinion. Since when is questioning your theory denigration?

 

[pknopp]

Which is the highest status any scientific explanation can attain.

So you're not throwing the shade you think you are throwing. At all. It just shows you don't understand what a theory is or how science works.

More vague generalizations.

 

[scruffy]

I wasn’t aware I was denigrating anything that is your opinion. Since when is questioning your theory denigration?

So read, then. Show us you've at least looked at the pictures. You mock the experts without studying their expertise

Here, look: the enzyme that makes RNA from DNA is called a polymerase. There isn't just one, there are five or more types.

RNA polymerase - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The question is, how does RNA polymerase know where to bind and where to start reading out?

The answer is, there is a region preceding a gene, called the promoter. The polymerase bonds to the promoter region, then starts reading out the DNA sequence.

Promoter (genetics) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But it's not that simple. The promoter region is controlled by other proteins called transcription factors.

Transcription factor - Wikipedia

These are timed to either enhance or suppress promotion. To facilitate piecewise evolution there are FIVE LAYERS of control by transcription factors. TF2 either enables or suppresses TF1. TF3 either enables or suppresses TF2. And so on.

Why all this complexity? If you're an engineer, why not just use ONE transcription factor that regulates the gene correctly?

The answer is, because the same gene that codes for blue eyes at birth, also codes for Parkinson's disease later in life. Bits and pieces of genes are re-used, for different purposes. Promoters live inside other genes, and are carved away after being read out.

The principle is sometimes called "layered evolution". Because this way you can change a dog into a wolf by altering a single gene. Because the one gene, will cause a whole cascade of changes, starting in the embryo.

You've probably heard that 98.8% of the human genome is identical to that of a chimpanzee. Which parts are different? Guess what, it's the transcription factors. That, and areas called "endogenous retroviruses", which are even weirder.

... a human-specific endogenous retroviral (ERV) insert was demonstrated to serve as the tissue-specific enhancer driving hippocampal expression of PRODH gene responsible for proline degradation and metabolism of neuromediators in CNS [75]. Finally, the ERVs can provide their promoters for expression of non-coding RNAs from the downstream genomic loci [76]. Almost all ERV inserts in introns of human genes were fixed in the antisense orientation relative to gene transcriptional direction...

This is how deeply genomes are being studied. We can use certain types of MRI image enhancers in chimps, when we're studying their brains, that don't work in humans. This is why. There's a transcription factor expressed in the human hippocampus that degrades the proline in the dye. It's not expressed in chimps, even though the gene still exists. So that 1.2% genetic variation ends up making a huge difference. Note the specific language: endogenous retroviruses can "provide" their promoters. What they're saying is there's a piece of DNA somewhere, that codes for an internal virus that let's one cell communicate with another. When that communication happens, the virus "provides" another little piece of DNA that serves as a promoter in the target cell.

Did you know, that if you turn off all the viruses in the human body (which you can do), the brain stops functioning entirely? True fact. Memory stops, and humans can no longer navigate the streets. We become figuratively brain dead.

Who in the world would design a system this way? I wouldn't. Would you?

 

[Leo123]

So read, then. Show us you've at least looked at the pictures. You mock the experts without studying their expertise

Here, look: the enzyme that makes RNA from DNA is called a polymerase. There isn't just one, there are five or more types.

RNA polymerase - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The question is, how does RNA polymerase know where to bind and where to start reading out?

The answer is, there is a region preceding a gene, called the promoter. The polymerase bonds to the promoter region, then starts reading out the DNA sequence.

Promoter (genetics) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But it's not that simple. The promoter region is controlled by other proteins called transcription factors.

Transcription factor - Wikipedia

These are timed to either enhance or suppress promotion. To facilitate piecewise evolution there are FIVE LAYERS of control by transcription factors. TF2 either enables or suppresses TF1. TF3 either enables or suppresses TF2. And so on.

Why all this complexity? If you're an engineer, why not just use ONE transcription factor that regulates the gene correctly?

The answer is, because the same gene that codes for blue eyes at birth, also codes for Parkinson's disease later in life. Bits and pieces of genes are re-used, for different purposes. Promoters live inside other genes, and are carved away after being read out.

The principle is sometimes called "layered evolution". Because this way you can change a dog into a wolf by altering a single gene. Because the one gene, will cause a whole cascade of changes, starting in the embryo.

You've probably heard that 98.8% of the human genome is identical to that of a chimpanzee. Which parts are different? Guess what, it's the transcription factors. That, and areas called "endogenous retroviruses", which are even weirder.



This is how deeply genomes are being studied. We can use certain types of MRI image enhancers in chimps, when we're studying their brains, that don't work in humans. This is why. There's a transcription factor expressed in the human hippocampus that degrades the proline in the dye. It's not expressed in chimps, even though the gene still exists. So that 1.2% genetic variation ends up making a huge difference. Note the specific language: endogenous retroviruses can "provide" their promoters. What they're saying is there's a piece of DNA somewhere, that codes for an internal virus that let's one cell communicate with another. When that communication happens, the virus "provides" another little piece of DNA that serves as a promoter in the target cell.

Did you know, that if you turn off all the viruses in the human body (which you can do), the brain stops functioning entirely? True fact. Memory stops, and humans can no longer navigate the streets. We become figuratively brain dead.

Who in the world would design a system this way? I wouldn't. Would you?

How did I mock 'experts?' Dr. Tour is an expert and has had many discussions with other experts. Just because he does not comport with YOUR opinion is not 'mocking.'

A polymerase is an enzyme with DNA polymerase and RNA polymerase assemble DNA and RNA molecules. The question I have is why? Why do these enzymes act the way they do? All you have done is explain their function while accusing me of denigrating and mocking. Frankly your posts smack of 'it's my way or the highway' you are not interested in my opinion on the subject and obviously know nothing about Dr. Tour's extensive research. I offered a link a long time ago where you could have educated yourself about Tour's theories and have heard 0 from you. Apparently you are content to wear blinders.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Until you can quote me accurately do find someone else to pester but have a lovely afternoon and evening.

I wasn't quoting you.

You admitted evolution changes the genetics of populations over time.

Right?

You're not wriggling out from under this with the dimestore troll tactics you use in other sections of the board. Those don't work, when discussing science.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

More vague generalizations.

There was nothing vague there. You are rolling up into a little ball.

When someone says "just a theory", it is quite safe to assume they know less than nothing about how science works.

And that's what you did. It was an egregious error.