gpuccio

Stimulated by the nth discussion with Zachriel on this point, I would like to offer here some thoughts about the difference between Natural Selection and Artificial Selection. First of all, the dramatic limitation of NS is the following: it works on one functional specification, and one functional specification only: reproductive advantage. In a sense, that specification is the byproduct of the system: biological beings that reproduce, that use limited resources to do that, and that compete for those resources. So, NS is a selection made possible by the existence of a complex functional system, and it selects for improvement in a function critically predefined in that system: reproductive success. So, it is a byproduct of the functional complexity already existing in the Read More ›

In Kairosfocus’ very good thread about functional complexity, I posted about antibody affinity maturation as an example of a very complex engineering process embedded in biological beings. Both Kairosfocus and Dionisio suggested that I could open a new thread to discuss the issue. When such good friends ask, I can only comply.  🙂 For lack of time, I will try to be very simple. First of all, I paste here my original post (#6 in the original thread): KF: Thank you for the very good summary. Among many other certainly interesting discussions, we may tend to forget sometimes that functionally specified complex information is the central point in ID theory. You are very good at reminding that to all here. I would Read More ›

In a recent post, I was challenged to offer examples of computation of dFSCI for a list of 4 objects for which I had inferred design. One of the objects was a Shakespeare sonnet. My answer was the following: A Shakespeare sonnet. Alan’s comments about that are out of order. I don’t infer design because I know of Shakespeare, or because I am fascinated by the poetry (although I am). I infer design simply because this is a piece of language with perfect meaning in english (OK, ancient english). Now, a Shakespeare sonnet is about 600 characters long. That corresponds to a search space of about 3000 bits. Now, I cannot really compute the target space for language, but I Read More ›

First of all, I want to apologize for shamelessly copying the title and structure of a recent post by VJ Torley. VJ, I hope you will pardon me: imitators, after all, are an undeniable mark of true success! 🙂 That said, let’s go to the subject of this post. I have discussed a little bit about biological function in my previous posts, and I have received many comments about that topic, some of them from very good interlocutors (I would like to publicly thank here Piotr and wd400, in particular). From my general experience in this blog during the last few years, I would like to sum up some of the more questionable attitudes and arguments which I have witnessed Read More ›

So, in the  first  part of this discussion, I have tried to show with real data from scientific literature how much of the human genome is conserved, and how that conservation is evaluated and expressed. Then I have argued that we already have good credible evidence for function in a relevant part of the human genome (let’s say about 20%), and that most of that functional part is non coding, and great part of it is non conserved. While some can disagree on the real figures, I think that it is really difficult to reject the whole argument. But, as I have anticipated, there are two more important aspects of the issue that I want to discuss ion detail. I will Read More ›

Conservation of sequence in the course of natural history has always been considered a sign of function. But does function always coincide with sequence conservation? And are there other important aspects which must be considered? This topic has been discussed recently with some passion here, so I will dedicate a series of two posts to it, in the hope that we can base our discussions on reliable data. I apologize in advance if some of the following discussion is necessarily rather technical. In general, in evolutionary analysis, conservation is considered a sign of function. Protein coding genes which are more strictly conserved in the course of time are usually considered as having greater functional constraint than those genes which change more. The Read More ›

What is function? What is functional information? Can it be measured? Let’s try to clarify those points a little. Function is often a controversial concept. It is one of those things that everybody apparently understands, but nobody dares to define. So it happens that, as soon as you try to use that concept in some reasoning, your kind interlocutor immediately stops you at the beginning, with the following smart request: “Yes, but what is function? How can you define it? So, I will try to define it. A premise. As we are not debating philosophy, but empirical science, we need to remain adherent to what can be observed. So, in defining function, we must stick to what can be observed: objects and events, in Read More ›

As this is my first OP, I thought it would be good to start with something really basic. And as I like explicit definitions in discussions, what could be better than discussing the definition of design in a place dedicated to the theory of Intelligent Design? Maybe it is too basic to be interesting, but I  believe that is not the case. Indeed, an explicit definition of design is rarely discussed, even here, and when it is discussed it seems to be very controversial, not only with our opponents, but even among those who are in the field of ID. I have tried many times to give my personal definition of design, in the course of different discussions here. I Read More ›