Darwinism: Why its failed predictions don’t matter

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May 18, 2017

Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Science

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From Wayne Rossiter, author of Shadow of Oz: Theistic Evolution and the Absent God: at his book blog:

It’s an odd pattern. It was this problem that came to mind as I recently revisited Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design and the Future of Faith, by Philip Kitcher. Kitcher is a philosopher at Columbia University, and he specializes on biology. His book was published by Oxford University Press, and was the recipient of the 2008 Lannan Notable Book Award. We should take his views seriously.

His book begins with a forceful assertion: “From the perspective of almost the entire community of natural scientists world-wide, this continued resistance to Darwin is absurd. Biologists confidently proclaim that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is as well established as any of the major theories in contemporary science.”

This is not really a prediction. But, it is a statement that was wrong even before it was penned. More.

People who are committed to intellectual integrity in their own work often miss this central point: Once a bully pulpit like Darwinism has been established the occupant does not need to be correct, accurate or even useful. He can be a drag on the system. He can lead the march into degenerate science. He can, incidentally, fix you good if you try to offer an alternative view however grounded.

Bullies are not dislodged by being shown to be wrong, only by being successful opposed. Efforts so far have been commendable but quite honestly, more is needed.

See also: Biologist Wayne Rossiter on Joshua Swamidass’ claim that entropy = information

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Comments

wd400: Try real hard to think of it; maybe it'll come to you.PaV_{May 31, 2017
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jdk:
(The formula for this is 52!/39!.)
To me it looks like you're determined to use the permutation formula. But other probability formulas exist. And you've already wrote it out. Here's what I mean: in Kircher's example of dealing a Bridge Hand, does he mention anything about comparing one hand to another? He doesn't. You have 52 cards, and you deal them out. Kircher doesn't say, "Since we're interested in the order of all possible Bridge hands, then the total number of possible Bridge hands where order is important is 4 x 10^21." IF he had said that, then I would have agreed with you. But he didn't say that. So, jdk, I'll ask you: what is the probability of being dealt the first 13 cards of a shuffled deck without replacement? You don't end up with (52)!/(39)!, which is the total number of permutations of a deck of 52 cards. You end up with: 1/52 x 1/51 x 1/50 ....x 1/40. When you cancel equal numbers in the numerator and the denominator, you end up with the exact same series of multiplications. But just because the probabilities are the same doesn't mean we have the right to say Kircher was interested in permutations when he makes no mention of that.
PaV, in respect to the 4 x 10^21 possible hands that we have been discussing, are A and B the same hand or different hands?
In terms of considering how many permutations can be made from a deck of 52 cards, yes, they're different. In terms of what Kircher describes, no, they're not any different. Let me ask you this: what is the probability of dealing 13 cards from a single deck when the order is in one direction, and then the order is in the opposite direction? IOW, does it matter a bit whether the Ace of Spades is dealt first, or last. What matters is if it was the 'first' card selected, or the 'thirteenth.' That's all.PaV_{May 31, 2017
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Let me know what the point is, I guess.wd400_{May 31, 2017
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wd400: You side-stepped my point: clever, but, nevertheless, evasive.PaV_{May 31, 2017
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PaV writes,
What is it, exactly, that you KNOW about biology?
FWIW, I know quite a bit about some aspects of biology, especially anatomy and physiology, but very little about biochemistry. I am not qualified to talk about the structure of proteins, for instance. I will once again note that I have been discussing pure probability, and haven't made any comments about anything to do with biology. (I did write one sentence at 207 where I agreed with most of a post of wd400, but even there I am mainly thinking about general probability models applied to the world, not about any particular biological knowledge that I have.)jdk_{May 31, 2017
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Oops, I just saw PaV's response at 214 to Dave, so let me skip what I just wrote, and reply this way. Dave wrote,
Do you agree that in Kitcher’s experiment, getting the clubs in order ace, 2, 3, …, jack, queen, king and getting the clubs in order king, queen, jack, …, 2, ace would be counted as distinct events?
and PaV replied,
Only if you’re going to use a permutation calculation.
I'm not sure that PaV answered the question. The question is is a permutation calculation the correct calculation for the situation we have been discussing, where 13 cards are dealt in order? In other posts you talked about bridge hands, or throwing coins all at once, or "whether the Jack of Diamonds was the first, of the fourth, or the thirteenth, doesn’t matter," but all of those are situations in which a permutation calculuation would be incorrect.jdk_{May 31, 2017
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PaV writes,
The Kitcher example involved dealing the first 13 cards. Whether the Jack of Diamonds was the first, of the fourth, or the thirteenth, doesn’t matter. Apparently you have difficulty seeing this. The first card dealt—whatever it is, has a chance of being dealt of 1 in 52; and the second card, no matter what it is, has a chance of 1 in 51. Why? Because there are only 51 card left after the first one is dealt. I don’t know why you can’t see this.
Of course I understand the calculation for dealing the cards in order: the number of possible hands is 52 • 51 • 50 • ... * 40 = 4 x 10^21. (The formula for this is 52!/39!.) However, hands which have the jack of diamonds first are different than hands that have the jack of diamonds 4th, or 13th, or in any other position. So let me ask PaV a question, based on Dave's post at 212 that should help clarify our mutual understandings: Let A = ace, 2, 3, 4 ... king of spades, dealt in that order. Let B = king, queen, jack, ... ace of spades in that order (the same cards as A but in the opposite order.) PaV, in respect to the 4 x 10^21 possible hands that we have been discussing, are A and B the same hand or different hands?jdk_{May 31, 2017
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There is no crocoduck, so no.wd400_{May 31, 2017
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wd400: Do the "croco-duck" and the 'duck-billed platypus' share a common ancestor?PaV_{May 31, 2017
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croco-duck (typo in the first case) is an example of a particularly silly creationist confusion.wd400_{May 31, 2017
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wd400: Try to say something of some significance. It's not like you to post rot. Your "corcoduck" is meant to convey something? I'll give you trillions of trillions of years, and new protein domains will not arise.PaV_{May 31, 2017
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daveS: Only if you're going to use a permutation calculation.PaV_{May 31, 2017
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Of course they don’t think this is what happened, because if they did, then they would have to abandon evolution.
I mean, even creationsists don't actually think proteins were created by one-off draws from an urn full of amino acids. Do they?
Doug Axe’s work shows just how isolated protein domains are
Axe tried to make a corcoduck -- evolving one modern protein into another one. Again, no one thinks this is how proteins came about. Modern proteins are the result of (in some cases) billions of years of evolutionary divergence, it is no great surprise they are quite separate from each other after all this time.wd400_{May 31, 2017
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PaV, Do you agree that in Kitcher's experiment, getting the clubs in order ace, 2, 3, ..., jack, queen, king and getting the clubs in order king, queen, jack, ..., 2, ace would be counted as distinct events?daveS_{May 31, 2017
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jdk:
Hi wd400. I’ve only been commenting on the pure probability issue, but I agree with you all that wrote in 205.
And to what, and why, do you agree? What is it, exactly, that you KNOW about biology?PaV_{May 31, 2017
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jdk:
I’m not sure how clear he is that he has changed the situation considerably, just as he doesn’t seem to understand the difference between receiving the components of an event in order (cards, dice coins) and receiving them all at once so there is no discernable order.
I believe that it is you who are wrong about this. The Kitcher example involved dealing the first 13 cards. Whether the Jack of Diamonds was the first, of the fourth, or the thirteenth, doesn't matter. Apparently you have difficulty seeing this. The first card dealt---whatever it is, has a chance of being dealt of 1 in 52; and the second card, no matter what it is, has a chance of 1 in 51. Why? Because there are only 51 card left after the first one is dealt. I don't know why you can't see this.PaV_{May 31, 2017
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wd400:
No one things biological proteins evolved as they are from a one-off draw from an urn full of amino acids!
Of course they don't think this is what happened, because if they did, then they would have to abandon evolution. Doug Axe's work shows just how isolated protein domains are. And this fact tells us that it is sheer impossibility to move from one domain to another simply by chance. This would require ALL protein domains to have been present from the beginning. And, now, pray tell, how did THAT come about? By chance?PaV_{May 31, 2017
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jdk/daveS/Origines:
I think that PaV is saying that when one views 1,000 coin flips as isolated events
This is what I meant. DaveS wrote: match “one letter at a time”. This IS the idea. And this IS how you "climb" Mt. Improbability.PaV_{May 31, 2017
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Hi wd400. I've only been commenting on the pure probability issue, but I agree with you all that wrote in 205. I find it odd the PaV just now brings up the situation where you try to match the component parts of the pattern one at a time, when that is unlike anything that has been discussed on this thread, including the original example of dealing 13 cards in order. I'm not sure how clear he is that he has changed the situation considerably, just as he doesn't seem to understand the difference between receiving the components of an event in order (cards, dice coins) and receiving them all at once so there is no discernable order.jdk_{May 30, 2017
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WD400 #205
WD400: If fitness landscapes are relatively smooth for a given trait, then evolution can be much more like Pavs example than the probability of particular bridge hands. There is no need to get every amino acid right in one draw, as each individual change increases the fitness of the creature that has it, meaning they are likely to be become fixed in the population and all individuals in subsequent generations start with improvements from previous ones, which they can in turn improve.
Here is where 'conservation of information' becomes relevant. In this article Dembski cites Kauffman saying:
If mutation, recombination, and selection only work well on certain kinds of fitness landscapes, yet most organisms are sexual, and hence use recombination, and all organisms use mutation as a search mechanism, where did these well-wrought fitness landscapes come from, such that evolution manages to produce the fancy stuff around us?
Dembski goes on saying:
Kauffman’s observation here is entirely in keeping with conservation of information. Indeed, he offers this observation in the context of discussing the No Free Lunch theorems, of which conservation of information is a logical extension. The fitness landscape supplies the evolutionary process with information. Only finely tuned fitness landscapes that are sufficiently smooth, don’t isolate local optima, and, above all, reward ever-increasing complexity in biological structure and function are suitable for driving a full-fledged evolutionary process. So where do such fitness landscapes come from? Absent an extrinsic intelligence, the only answer would seem to be the environment …. Okay, so the environment supplies the information needed to drive biological evolution. But where did the environment get that information? From itself? The problem with such an answer is this: conservation of information entails that, without added information, biology’s information problem remains constant (breaks even) or intensifies (gets worse) the further back in time we trace it. The whole magic of evolution is that it’s supposed to explain subsequent complexity in terms of prior simplicity, but conservation of information says that there never was a prior state of primordial simplicity — the information, absent external input, had to be there from the start. …. But without intelligent input, conservation of information implies that as we regress biological information back in time, the amount of information to be accounted for never diminishes and may actually increase. .
I believe Dembski’s point is clear: assuming smooth fitness landscapes, as Dawkins and wd400 do, is, in effect, an attempt to hide the problem of origin of information in the ‘environment’.Origenes_{May 30, 2017
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I suspect Pav's example is motivated by Dawkins' "climbing Mt Improbable" metaphor. Dawkins makes the point that using some naive specification might show that a biological sequence or trait is very improbable. The silliest examples being "this is 100 amino acids long, and there are 20 amino acids so there is only a 1/(20^100) chance this protein exists!" Dawkins point is biological traits are the not the result of single draws from a probability distribution (like the card examples), but evolution along lineages. If fitness landscapes are relatively smooth for a given trait, then evolution can be much more like Pavs example than the probability of particular bridge hands. There is no need to get every amino acid right in one draw, as each individual change increases the fitness of the creature that has it, meaning they are likely to be become fixed in the population and all individuals in subsequent generations start with improvements from previous ones, which they can in turn improve. Even then, working out the probability of arriving at a particular sequence is not a case of just adding probabilities (it requires some quite fancy calculus actually). And, of course, there is much more wrong with the "1/20^(protein_length)" specification. No one things biological proteins evolved as they are from a one-off draw from an urn full of amino acids!wd400_{May 30, 2017
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jdk @200 I think that PaV is saying that when one views 1,000 coin flips as isolated events — not as a sequence — then you can focus on each result individually. Matching the first flip takes only two flips at the most. And so on. 2000 flips ( at the most) to match all the isolated events. He contrasts these isolated events with the situation when one considers the events to form a whole. Now, due to our decision to lump the events together, we need 2^1000 flips to match the pattern. In #186 PaV writes: "It’s only so when the “mind” decides to “group together” individual events into a “dependent” whole. ... Notice that it is the “mind” doing this, and deciding this." PaV, in effect, points out the role of the mind wrt probabilities, which is profoundly interesting. - - - - BTW Is no one going to answer my question at the bottom of post #194? edit: DaveS beat me to it in #201Origenes_{May 30, 2017
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re 198: I see no place where Perakh mentions throwing 100 dice.jdk_{May 30, 2017
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Hmmm. That is an entirely different scenario than any we have discussed in this thread.jdk_{May 30, 2017
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jdk, I interpreted PaV's 2000 flips calculation to apply to a scenario where you are given a pattern of length 1000 to match "one letter at a time". For example: HTTHTH ... You flip a coin until it matches the first letter, "H". Once that is achieved, you flip the coin until it matches the second letter, "T" Then you go on to the third letter, try to match the "T", and so on. Matching one letter at a time would be expected to take 2000 flips on average, so I'm guessing that's what he had in mind.daveS_{May 30, 2017
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Also, there are some confusions in what you wrote: First, if you flip the coins 1000 times, there are 2^1000 possibilities. If you already have a pattern you are trying to match, the probability of a match is 1/2^1000. Therefore, on average (but not with a certainty), you would need to flip the coins 2^1000 times in order to get a match. This calculation involves multiplying, not adding: 1/2 • 1/2 • ... 1000 times. So your statement that "So, on average, you need only 2000 flips to match the pattern you find." is wrong. If you flip the coins 2000 times, you'll only get two of the possible events, and of course you are very unlikely to match your pattern if you look at only two events. Also, as I have explained, but you don't seem to understand, if you flip all the coins AT ONCE, you don't know what order they came in, so that is different than flipping the coin 1000 times in succession. But if you flip them in order, you are correct that it will take, on average, 2^1000 flips to match the pattern.jdk_{May 30, 2017
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jdk:
Give me an example of the difference between linked and added.
You have the results, supposedly, of 1,000 coin flips. Then, on average, to get the first position, you need two flips; and, two flips, on average for all the other 999 positions. So, on average, you need only 2000 flips to match the pattern you find. Whereas, collectively, the pattern, considered as a whole, would need 2^1000 flips to match the pattern. IOW, if you flipped 1000 coins AT ONCE, it would take 2^1000 of those flips to match the pattern.PaV_{May 30, 2017
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jdk: Perakh begins with a sequence of 100 4's. He says that this is highly unlikely. Then, he says, what about a sequence of 10 4's? Still unlikely, but like the 100 4's. That's where he gets his "psychological" side of things.PaV_{May 30, 2017
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Also, PaV, at 194 you write,
And that includes Perakh, who wants to divide the sequence of 100 4’s into 10 sequences of 10 4’s.
I don't see where he does that. The example you quoted from his book is just about ten throws. Can you show where he discusses throwing 100 4's?jdk_{May 30, 2017
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PaV, you write,
You’d make a lousy evolutionary biologist if you think the probabilities are linked and not added.
Leaving out the biology, and just talking probability, give me an example where probabilities are added. And what does "linked" mean. Give me an example of the difference between linked and added.jdk_{May 30, 2017
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