The illusion of evolution and how it works

[he_who_is_nobody]

The full text is there (i.e. methods, materials used, and the results), as well as the figures and tables.

And yet you still are not indicating whether or not you read the whole paper.

Speaking of figures, here is one that you do not understand or you are ignoring because it goes against the narrative you are trying to construct:

Let me make it SUPER fucking easy for you, here's Figure 1 from the paper:

Relationship between observed and expected (multiplicative) fitnesses for 65 VSV genotypes carrying pairs of nucleotide substitutions. The solid line represents the null hypothesis of pure multiplicative effects. Deviations from this line are a consequence of the existence of epistatic fitness effects (εij = W ij - W i W j ≠ 0). Filled circles correspond with genotypes carrying two deleterious mutations; open circles correspond with genotypes carrying two beneficial ones.

The red line corresponds to neutrality (fitness = 1.0).

In conclusion I must quote a person who's judgement I hope you trust:

Sorry but I have to be blunt. You are wrong wrong wrong. And more wrong. You are so wrong I cannot even describe it to you. (sigh...)

 

[Alligoose]

Rhed, did you read the articles you linked or just the abstracts?

I understand it, but I also understand you cannot accept it because it doesn't agree with your worldview.

Truer words!

But this is more of a compliment than you make it out to be.

The worldview you speak of is, of course, "I believe in establishing tentative conclusions based on sound evidence and reasoning."

Not, as I believe you will say, "God can't've done it, cuz he don't exist, ergo science."

I'm proud of my worldview. It's a worldview shared by others that gave us: vaccines, surgeries, airplanes, and... Electronic devices. Just like the one you're typing on.

Why do you accept every other scientific explanation, rely on the conclusions they've come to, EXCEPT for evolution? What threat does evolution pose to you such that you must hem and haw against it, pulling absurdities out of your ass and deliberately misinterpreting the evidence?

And yes, I say deliberate, because people have been more than patient in explaining the who, what, when, where, and why you're wrong.

 

[Alligoose]

It's better to remain silent than to parrot nonsense. It has been shown over and over again by the members of this forum that the Theory of Evolution is scientific yet you continue to blindly ignore it. Even the Pope says God is not a magician.

I never thought God as a magician. Christians don't believe that either, so I'm glad the pope is on the same page.

Science is against evolution, so please stop calling it scientific. Genetics is scientific. Biology is scientific. Cosmology is scientific. The ToE is not. It's based on blind faith.

Deliberately dishonest and outright lies.

I support this claim by saying you are clearly familiar with the literature. What explanation do you have for the congruence of scientific thought on evolution?

Are you vaccinated?

 

[tuxbox]

Deliberately dishonest and outright lies.

If he truly believes that science is against evolution, then it is not a lie. It is just ignorance mixed with brainwashed ideology.

 

[Rhed]

I'm not, you are, because it is clear you are unfamiliar with the terminology.

Yeah, site-directed mutagenesis is still random with respect to fitness. That's what the random in random mutation means.

So that's the first thing you get wrong.

You have to look up the measured fitness effects of the double-mutant compared to the wild-type and the single mutants, It's in supplementary info, which you can find here:
http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2004/10/16/0404125101.DC1

See the measured fitness of double mutants. In several cases, the net effect is still positive (but less than the fitness gain of the single-mutant. So I'm not wrong, you are wrong.

They go to great lengths to explain and define how they measure fitness.


So a deleterious fitness effect is a value less than 1, and a beneficialt fitness effect is a value greater than 1. Exactly equal to 1 is effectively neutral. Let's look at the table in supplementary info, under "Double mutant fitness":
Orange = Deleterious double mutant
Green = Beneficial double mutant.

0.869± 0.022
1.060 ± 0.073 Oh look at me, I'm not supposed to exist.
0.899 ± 0.025
0.694 ± 0.013
0.637 ± 0.012
0.582 ± 0.007
0.837 ± 0.016
0.935 ± 0.016
0.972 ± 0.017
0.841 ± 0.016
1.000 ± 0.013 * Seems to be strictly neutral.
1.014 ± 0.015
1.014 ± 0.015 Wait a minute, what's all these beneficial double mutants doing here when they were produced by combining deleterious single-mutants?
0.671 ± 0.016
1.041 ± 0.041 Another one.. weird!
0.959 ± 0.018
1.023 ± 0.024 Oops, I did it again!
0.757 ± 0.037
0.687 ± 0.010
0.769 ± 0.008
0.889 ± 0.017
lethal
0.992 ± 0.019
0.664 ± 0.010
lethal
0.650 ± 0.014
0.934 ± 0.013
0.836 ± 0.010
lethal
1.022 ± 0.052 Call the creationism police, something's wrong here. How can double deleterious mutants result in synergistic positive epistasis?
0.867 ± 0.014
1.002 ± 0.031
0.866 ± 0.011
0.986 ± 0.014
0.658 ± 0.007
0.625 ± 0.010
0.657 ± 0.005
0.739 ± 0.015
0.665 ± 0.008
0.613 ± 0.009
0.778 ± 0.021
1.012 ± 0.015
0.996 ± 0.021
1.013 ± 0.029
0.950 ± 0.038
0.592 ± 0.035
0.936 ± 0.016
0.885 ± 0.016
0.920 ± 0.012
1.026 ± 0.015
0.978 ± 0.009
0.930 ± 0.013
0.998 ± 0.013
0.942 ± 0.014
1.063 ± 0.020
1.064 ± 0.017
1.091 ± 0.031
1.082 ± 0.024
0.928 ± 0.012
1.112 ± 0.031
1.116 ± 0.026



Which merely means the combined effect of two mutations was less beneficial than the effect of a single mutation. In several cases, as you can see on the supplementary information table, the net effect of both mutations was still beneficial.

But still higher than the wild-type (look at the numbers). I'm still right, you're still wrong.

Yes, and I have not claimed otherwise. Suppose a double mutant arises against a background of wildtype, it will still have superior fitness compared to the unmutated wild-type in several cases.

No, I have to ask, did you read the paper? The whole paper, including the supplementary information, and did you understand what you read? Apparently not.

Also, THE LONG TERM EVOLUTION EXPERIMENT WITH E COLI. Got a response to that?

You seem to have totally ignored it, and now want to extrapolate the case of evolution in a single viral experiment to generalize the effect of epistasis for all of life. You need to not just look at single cases, in single experiments, to pick out single sentences you apparently don't even understand.

I just used AI about this paper and Rumralet response. Basically, you misrepresented the paper about double mutants.

 

[Jebez42]

great way to get the last word - necromancy a ten year old thread on an inactive forum

 

[Rhed]

great way to get the last word - necromancy a ten year old thread on an inactive forum

I didn't know they had inactive forums. But, my last word stands.

 

[Mythtaken]

Evolution isn't my strong suit and I confess I only read over the first few pages of this thread, but it seems the gist of your argument is the idea of a single, common ancestor is nothing more than a belief, which negates all of evolution. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not going to attempt to argue genetics or dig into the subtleties of evolutionary science, as I do not have the background or interest to do so. However, I can comment on how I see the two sides of the discussion in broad strokes.

There's a reason the theory of evolution remains a theory. There continues to be new research, new discoveries, and new information about evolution. It may indeed turn out that life began in multiple places on Earth, destroying the concept of a single common ancestor. If that happens, the theory will be revised with the new information and research down that line will begin. That is the essence of scientific. Until then, however, the single source idea is still the best model of how life evolved on this planet, based on all of the evidence collected to date.

On the other side, (Christian) creationists have maintained the theory that everything was created at the same time by God, based solely on the content presented in the Bible. And while they sometimes accept that certain creatures have changed or evolved over time (for unexplained reasons), there is no direct evidence that any of the "kinds" share a common ancestor. This theory is plagued by the continued lack of evidence of either the creation event or a creator, making it increasingly difficult for anyone to accept as viable.

It seems clear the evolutionary science approach is fundamentally better as a path to truth.