Logic and evolution (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 26, 2016, 11:48 (3041 days ago) @ David Turell

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? 
dhw: If the information was necessary, it would have had to survive!-DAVID: 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.-A very different way of looking at the process. We now have a code for new information, as opposed to the claim that all the information was already present. “Most of what existed” is fair enough - an organism that comes up with a new organ is not going to change absolutely everything, but what is new is the bit that did not exist! Neither of us knows why a discard might have been necessary, but it is obvious why a discard might happen when the new code takes over (why hold onto irrelevant information?). And none of this explains how the loss of internal information PRODUCED the new internal information that enabled the organism to cope with or exploit the new external information (environmental change), or how the latter can have been present at the beginning. Hence my plea:
 
dhw: ….please give me a concrete example of what you mean by speciation being caused by loss of information which was present at the beginning.-DAVID: 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.-The “hidden code” would presumably be your God's computer programme for every change (please correct me if I'm wrong). No, we don't know if that exists. I don't understand “contain information by subtraction”. If something is contained it is there. How can it be contained by being taken away? Adaptive changes suggest there is a mechanism which enables cells to change their structure (internal information) in order to cope with new external information. That has nothing to do with the invention of new organs. I don't know why you are so reluctant to give a concrete example of how speciation can be caused by loss of information which was present at the beginning. I can only assume that you agree with my own example: the platypus could only become a platypus by discarding all the information that would otherwise have made it an elephant or a human. Is that what you mean, and do you find it feasible?
The rest of your post revolves around the same obfuscations, except for this:-dhw: ….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.-DAVID: The 3.8 billion years of info is your assumption, not mine. -Life is believed to have begun 3.8 billion years ago. If you claim that all the information was present at the beginning, then it was present 3.8 billion years ago. Just as information is information, the beginning is the beginning.