Logic and evolution (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, July 26, 2016, 01:33 (3041 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: If adaptation is related to loss of genetic information, and it represents something new, why do you think it is logical that loss of information means it was no longer necessary? 
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> dhw: If the information was necessary, it would have had to survive!-The requirement could be that genes had to be rearranged with deletion of some portions, resulting in a code for new information developed from most of what existed, and that a discard of info was necessary to create the new code. The deletion and rearrangement may well have been the necessary step, a slightly different way of looking at the process.
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> DAVID: Isn't it possible that recombination of genes is a subtraction that does produce new hidden information with the new DNA structure? We only know that DNA codes for protein. We have no idea how it create forms or function.
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> dhw: A recombination of genes may well entail a subtraction (= loss of information) - but I don't understand how a loss of information can “produce” new information.....If not, please give me a concrete example of what you mean by speciation being caused by loss of information which was present at the beginning.-We know how DNA codes for protein molecules. It also controls forms of areas and organs of organisms (phenotypes). We have no idea how DNA exerts those controls. We also don't know if there is a hidden code to manage those controls, or possibly a trick of coding which allows DNA to contain information by subtraction. This is what adaptive changes have suggested. See my comment above.
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> dhw: Once again: external information is information, and in my hypothesis it triggers changes to internal information .... These forms of information are interdependent - hence my next question:
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> dhw: How can those changes be present at the beginning?-The two types of info are related, but are separate. External info triggers internal reaction and internal info responds. We know single celled animals can re-write DNA at least in the epigenetic ways Shapiro has found. Speciation must involve larger re-writes. That must have coded controls, and I think from the beginning, George's LUCA.
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> dhw: Recombination would be part of the process of producing new forms and functions, but loss “allowing for” is not the same as loss “producing”! Once more, what do you mean by ALL THE INFO NEEDED? There is no way a new organism could be created without consideration of the environment it would be living in. Therefore the original DNA would have had to include ALL the info needed about ALL the environmental changes that organisms would cope with or exploit for the next 3.8 billion years (other than the external and internal changes resulting from God's dabbling). So now you have your God either preprogramming or directly producing every environmental change.-The 3.8 billion years of info is your assumption, not mine. As above, I can conceive of another layer of coding in DNA which appears with deletion.->> 
> dhw:I can understand how genetic recombination, transposition or reduplication can be part of the process of innovation and can also entail loss of information, but I can't understand how the LOSS of information can PRODUCE NEW information leading to the existence of an organ which never existed before. But perhaps your explanation of “hidden” plus the concrete example I have asked you for will make it all clearer.-Again, stated above. We are missing a great area of understanding in phenotype control and in how an organism runs its biological processes Again we know somewhat which gene controls which area or process. There has to be hidden coding yet to be discovered. and it may involve deletion of DNA to bring it out.