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Natural selection simply must produce complex specified information, because chance can’t do it.

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Some hope Murchison meteorite holds key/DOE, Argonne National Laboratory

Or so they think at MSNBC. In “Can life evolve from a different chemical code?” (8/19/2011), Clara Moskowitz tells us, “Scientists ponder if life elsewhere is based on another set of amino acids.”

Other, that is, than the 20 – among hundreds – that build life’s known proteins:

“Life has been using a standard set of 20 amino acids to build proteins for more than 3 billion years,” said Stephen J. Freeland of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the University of Hawaii. “It’s becoming increasingly clear that many other amino acids were plausible candidates, and although there’s been speculation and even assumptions about what life was doing, there’s been very little in the way of testable hypotheses.”

Along with colleagues, he discovered that

… life seemingly did not choose its 20 building blocks randomly.

“We found that chance alone would be extremely unlikely to pick a set of amino acids that outperforms life’s choice,” Freeland said.

So there is only one possible answer:
Natural selection

The story is,

“Here we found a very simple test that begins to show us that life knew exactly what it was doing,” Freeland said. “This is consistent with the idea that there was natural selection going on.”

No, it is not. Natural selection is blind to outcomes. That was the point, remember?

Turns out it’s “experimentally difficult” to find out any more.

We’ll be back here at  origin of life in 1, 2, and 20 years. Same station, Same show. Same theme. Some new cast members.

Comments
It is already a product of several levels of selection...
Or several levels of sheer dumb luck...Joseph
August 22, 2011
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The Strength of natural Selection in the Wild:
Natural selection disappears as a biological force and reappears as a statistical artifact. The change is not trivial. It is one thing to say that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution; it is quite another thing to say that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of various regression correlations between quantitative characteristics. It hardly appears obvious that if natural selection is simply a matter of correlations established between quantitative traits, that Darwin's theory has any content beyond the phenomenological, and in the most obvious sense, is no theory at all. Be that as it may, the real burden of Kingsolver's study lies in the quantitative conclusions it reaches. Two correlations are at issue. The first is linear, and corresponds to what in population genetics is called directional selection; and the second quadratic, and corresponds either to stabilizing or disruptive selection. These are the cornerstones of the modern hill and valley model of much of mathematical population genetics. Kingsolver reported a median absolute value of 0.16 for linear selection, and a median absolute value of 0.10 for quadratic selection. Thus an increase of one standard deviation in, say, beak finch length, could be expected to change fitness by only 16 percent in the case of linear selection, and 10 percent in the case of quadratic selection. These figures are commonly understood to represent a very weak correlation. Thus if a change in the length of a beak's finch by one standard deviation explains 16 percent of the change in the population's fitness, 84 percent of the change is not explained by selection at all.
Joseph
August 22, 2011
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There is no fundamental difference between chance and natural selection. All chance processes operate through the filter of natural law. Increase the number of natural laws, does not get rid of chance, it just narrows down the possibilities. It always upsets me that Darwinists try to claim that NS is not random, when in fact it is.noam_ghish
August 21, 2011
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So . . . life chose life before it was life! Gotchya.Brent
August 21, 2011
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"If you have differential reproduction due to something other than heritable (random) variation then you don’t have natural selection." What confuses people is that most of the variation that we are familiar with isn't random. It is already a product of several levels of selection, since what we see is usually a part of a functioning organism, at worst it wasn't fatal at the meiotic or developmental levels or young adult levels at best and unlikely, it may be an obvious adaptive advantage, and usually it is just part of a mileau of accumulating variation having perhaps a minor influence on differential reproduction.africangenesis
August 21, 2011
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From the article you quote: "So Freeland and his University of Hawaii colleague Gayle K. Philip devised a test to try to learn if the 20 amino acids Earth's life uses were randomly chosen, or if they were the only possible ones that could have done the job." This was an analysis of physical and chemical attributes - not and assumption that NS acted but a search to see if there was something that NS could act on. The post is misleading.psiloiordinary
August 20, 2011
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"Other, that is, than the 20 – among hundreds – that build life’s known proteins ..." There are now (*) 22 known amino acids coded by DNA ... this is why the 64 DNA codons are no longer called "the universal DNA code", but rather "the canonical DNA code". The discovery of the 21st amino acid coded by DNA codons shows the DNA code to *be* a code, such that it is not chemical necessity, but rather context and "syntax" which causes this codon to code for that amino acid. (*) 22 is the latest number of which I am aware.Ilion
August 20, 2011
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The problem with applying natural selection to inanimate matter and energy is that nature would "select" a rock- simple to make and durable.Joseph
August 20, 2011
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Actually for natural selection you need, by definition, differential reproduction due to heritable (random) variation. If you have differential reproduction due to something other than heritable (random) variation then you don't have natural selection. And if there isn't any differential reproduction then you don't have natural selection. That said I would say the concept that "whatever happenes happens" applies to the theory of evolution (as in whatever survives to reproduce...)Joseph
August 20, 2011
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Sure as heck some selection was going on. Natural selection is teleological. Since natural selection is, by definition, whatever happens happens, anything is consistent with the idea that there was natural selection going on.Mung
August 20, 2011
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