Discussion thread for dandan/Inferno debate

[Prolescum]

This is the discussion thread for the debate between dandan and Inferno. You can find the debate here.

Good hunting

 

[Isotelus]

Alrighty then. For anyone who hasn't read this thread, it looks like I will be assessing the debate as it progresses and giving an evaluation at the end, which I imagine I'll post on this thread for the sake of simplicity. My initial concern was that I may be considered too biased in that I support the evolution side of things, but I will try to remain as neutral as possible and determine whose points are best supported largely by referring to the model of phylogenetics as it is put forth by the scientific literature; after all, it is the scientists who are using and applying it to come to their conclusions. Also, in the interest of maintaining objectivity and keeping things organized, I will not be making comments pertaining to the content of the debate while it is still open.

Input and/or suggestions on how the judging will proceed are welcome and appreciated!

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

/debate.

 

[Rumraket]

What is the debate resolution really about? I'm having trouble parsing what is to be demonstrated by either participant.

What phylogenetic relationships in particular are we talking about? All of life? Some obscure sub-mammalian clade? What does it mean to say they "hold up to the evidence"?

If phylogenetic relationships are inferred FROM evidence, how can they not hold up to it? It would seem they are by definition supported by the evidence. I suppose the resolution could be taken to be a question of the strength of the congruence between multiple independently derived phylogenies, but then the participants would still have to settle on which phylogenies in particular they are to defend/attack.

 

[scalyblue]

Wait, by posting agree is dandan saying that he is arguing pro?

 

[Isotelus]

What is the debate resolution really about? I'm having trouble parsing what is to be demonstrated by either participant.

What phylogenetic relationships in particular are we talking about? All of life? Some obscure sub-mammalian clade? What does it mean to say they "hold up to the evidence"?

If phylogenetic relationships are inferred FROM evidence, how can they not hold up to it? It would seem they are by definition supported by the evidence. I suppose the resolution could be taken to be a question of the strength of the congruence between multiple independently derived phylogenies, but then the participants would still have to settle on which phylogenies in particular they are to defend/attack.

I'm not entirely sure myself, but I trust Inferno to start things off on the right track. I suspect it may have something to do with dandan's claims from the OFNF thread about there being too much discordance in general.

 

[Isotelus]

I'm not addressing a particular argument here directly, but I think both Inferno and dandan (and everyone reading their discussion) ought to be aware of Dr. Senter's part 2 of his creation science paper:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2011.02349.x/pdf

Completely unrelated to the debate but in specific regards to Dr. Senter, many may also appreciate this (Hwin buddy, I'm looking at you): http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Flood%20geology.pdf

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Completely unrelated to the debate but in specific regards to Dr. Senter, many may also appreciate this (Hwin buddy, I'm looking at you): http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Flood%20geology.pdf

Gravy.

I love the National Center for Science Education. I am not sure how this went under my nose for all this time.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

dandan[/url]"]So the real question is, are this discordances statistically significant?

:facepalm:

A formal test of the theory of universal common ancestry and Some Statistics of Incongruent Phylogenetic Trees. Dandan, you have seen these before.

/debate.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Inferno[/url]"]But it's the other way around: Nobody wants to be related to a monkey, it's just the way things are.

Speak for yourself. I love all non-human primates, even more than most humans.

Inferno[/url]"]As far as I know, but I might be wrong on that, feathers have only been found in theropod dinosaurs and their descendants: Birds.

That depends on what you mean by feathers. Pycnofibers have been found on pterosaurs, but that is far from what anyone would call a feather, it may not even be related at all. Other structures, “integuments”, have been found on an ornithichian dinosaur (there are two main branches of dinosaur [ornithichian and saurischian] and therapods belong to saurischian), suggesting that feathers/proto-feathers might be a shared derived trait among dinosaurs. I personally like to call all this stuff “dino fuzz”, even though it is found on pterosaurs too.

Inferno[/url]"]As I said, statistics is one of the few areas of science where I have to shamefully hang my head and declare my absolute ignorance. I simply don't know.

At least, you can admit this. You do not provide an equation, refuse to demonstrate how said equation supports your premise with real examples while claiming that it obviously does, than have someone else demonstrate that assertion made about real world examples is false with the provided equation, and turn around and claim it still works in the “correct context”.

 

[Dustnite]

Ok I'm ready to play!

 

[Rumraket]

I'm beginning to suspect dandan might have found out he has better things to do than embarrass himself any more here.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

I'm beginning to suspect dandan might have found out he has better things to do than embarrass himself any more here.

Oh if only that were true. However:

dandan[/url]"]... but I what to make clear that I will be out of town next week, so I will probably post my second reply and the end of next week.

 

[Rumraket]

I'm beginning to suspect dandan might have found out he has better things to do than embarrass himself any more here.

Oh if only that were true. However:

dandan[/url]"]... but I what to make clear that I will be out of town next week, so I will probably post my second reply and the end of next week.

Ahh okay.

 

[Dustnite]

Well if there are significant discordances between 2 organisms then they can´t be related, for example I wouldn´t expect to see any discordance when comparing black humans and white humans (because they are the same kind), but I would expect discordances between humans and chimps/gorillas.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Inferno’s last post was 2177 words (not counting anything in a quote box). Dandan responded with 583 total words and ignored everything in Inferno's last post. You sure stepped into it this time Inferno. Nevertheless, did you really expect anything different?

dandan[/url]"]1) Some tree has to predominate regardless if evolution, creation or some other model is true.

With “tree that predominates” I mean that when comparing the genome in different organisms, some of them would necessary be more similar to others.

:facepalm:

No. Some tree does not have to dominate in design. All trees that are created are equally likely because design does not predict any pattern. That means if you take a trait like the eye and DNA that makes a tail and compare the trees they create, there is no reason for the trees to resemble each other since a designer can mix and match parts at will (it could even make new ones that would not be related to anything previously known). A branching pattern is only predicted if common descent is correct.

dandan[/url]"]2) If for example orangutans would have been more similar to humans than chimps, you would have drawn a different tree with humans and orangutans in the same clade, and you would have put chimps in a “distant clade” and you would have call that the correct tree. That wouldn´t falsify common descent, it would simply chance the order in which different organisms diverged.

:facepalm:

We do not draw the trees, they are created using mathematical algorithms counting hundreds (if not thousands) of different characters. This has been explained to you several times.

dandan[/url]"]4) A discordant nested hierarchy, with statistically significant discordances would falsify common descent and ID would be consistent with the data. In other words in a ID model any attempt to organize organisms in a Nested Hierarchy would be full of discordances.
Just to be clear A discordant tree is when a portion of DNA does not match the predominant tree, for example if the predominant tree puts humans more closer to chimps than to mice, a discordant gene would be a gene that puts humans closer to mice than to chimps.

Intelligent Design creationism would only be consistent with the data because it is an ad hoc explanation of the data. However, Intelligent Design creationism is not useful, as it does not predict any pattern before the fact. Beyond that, you are still acting as if Intelligent Design creationism is a valid model.

dandan[/url]"]Under what objective criteria do you say that 30% discordances in the human/Chimp/Gorilla genome is insignificant? What if instead of 30% we would have had 35% or 40% or 50% up to what point would you say that these discordances are significant?

:facepalm:

Isotelus has already explained how you are misinterpreting this paper. Repeating debunked arguments ad nauseam does not make them any more correct. It only demonstrates your unwillingness to let go of your preconceived notions.

dandan[/url]"]¿Why can´t a feathered mammal be explained by convergent evolution, or by simply changing the phalogenetic tree (putting feathers before mammals and birds diverged) or by any other of the mechanisms that would be consistent with common descent?

Unlike Intelligent Design creationism, evolutionary theory is not an ad hoc explanation of the data.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Inferno[/url]"]This also gives me a chance to rectify an oversight I made. I don't read the peanut gallery so I have no idea what people are writing, but I forgot to mention that certain proto-feathers have emerged elsewhere, I believe pterosaurs had them. Those are again examples of convergent evolution, not of the exact same thing evolving again.

I do not think this is an example of convergent evolution. In fact, I think “dino fuzz” is a basal trait shared among the Ornithordira/Avemetatarsalia (that is new) clade.

Inferno[/url]"]At this point, I would also like to state the following:
You don't seem to have read anything I wrote, otherwise you wouldn't be asking the same questions I answered in my first two posts. Writing the first two posts took a lot of time and effort, as you can see I'm already less inclined on my third post. If you can't be bothered to read what I write, then I won't be bothered to write what you don't read. If you repeatedly make me re-post what I already said, then I will put an early end to this debate. I simply won't have my time wasted in such a manner, though I am happy to provide if you show that you actually read what I write. Yes, I am that vain.

​

 

[Dustnite]

Dandan responded in under 6 hours to Inferno's post. Didn't read it again. Now he's shifting the burden of proof:

Sure I can provide the equations, but keep in mind the following, you are expected to provide your own equation (or model) and then explain why your equation is better than mine, if you refute my equation but you don´t substitute it for an equation that proves your point, we will end up with “agnosticism” or in other words we will end up with “We don´t know” (we don´t know if the discordances are statistically significant) and therefore we would have to conclude that we don´t know if common ancestry is the best model.

Is he for real? This has to be Poe

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Apart from that, I can't follow his attempts at doing mathematics - the "same"(?) numbers seem to shift between millions and billions in his calculations, with the result that it's hard to tell what he means.

On top of that is the assumption that the calculations are written in stone - that events have to occur at the calculated intervals.

Since the population size is 1,000,000,000 then if you divide 30,000,000 with 1,000,000 you have 30….1 in 30 are the chances of getting such mutation in at least 1 individual, or in other words you need 30 generations (600 years) to achieve such mutation.

No, you don't!

It's not 1 in every 30 generations - it's 1 in every 30 individuals.

As a result, his later calculations are wildly off - even more so with his confusion over millions and billions.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

dandan[/url]"]You did not answer my question, isotelus didn’t answer the question in the post you linked, Aron didn’t answer it in any of the videos that you linked, and the nice image that you showed didn´t answered to the question ether.

I asked what % of discordance among the Chimp/Human/Gorilla genome would be sufficient to falsify common ancestry. We currently have a 30% discordance this means that:

70% of the genome shows this tree ((H,C)G)

15% shows this tree (H,G,)C)

And 15% shows this tree (C,G)H)

*For the sake of this particular point I over simplified what the authors really said

Since apparently this combintatoin of 70%,15%,15% is not a problem for you, then what combination would represent a problem? Would 80% 10% 10% represent a problem? Would 40% 30% 30% represent a problem? Up to what point would you say that the discordances are statistically significant?
I have the impression that it doesn´t matter what discordances we find, you will always explain them in a context of “common ancestry”

:facepalm:

You obviously never read the paper. Those figures you created do not represent the actual percentages by any stretch of the imagination. At this point, I see nothing more than trolling coming from you.

dandan[/url]"]That is not true, platypuses and snakes have the same proteins (same genes) for venom, but that is irrelevant you will still invoke convergent evolution as you did with the sonar in whales and bats.

:facepalm:

Having the same proteins does not mean one has the same genes (as if we needed any more examples of your lack of knowledge when it comes to biology). Essentially, DNA (genes) make up codons, which make proteins. Any high school biology student knows that most genes are redundant and create the same codons, thus we can have different genes and the same proteins (which is exactly what we see with platypus and snake venom). I highly doubt dandan knew this before reading it here. Again, nothing more than trolling at this point.

dandan[/url]"]So for example if aborigines and chimps share a protein, or a portion of DNA or whatever with 15 bases pairs that is absent in the rest of the human population, that would imply that this protein “evolved” in the aborigine population AFTER they diverged from other human races.

:shock:

It appears to me that someone is not showing all the cards they are holding.