Logic and evolution (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, July 26, 2016, 15:33 (3041 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: 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. ..... 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:
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> 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.-You can't push the discussion of possible mechanisms too far. All we know is what I've presented. Adaptation is often seen with loss of information, and this means loss of information might be part of the speciation process. The rest is guessing how speciation occurs. You logically want more info for a new species, but I warn you speciation might defy logic, just as quantum mechanics does.
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> 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.-
> dhw: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?-No. I can imagine a recombination of genes made the branch leading to platypus, is not the recombination that lead to elephants. As with chimp and human, a simple population number says the DNAs in both are 98% of each other, but internal analysis of DNA arrangement and expression says we are 78% similar. This is how differentiation is made.
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> DAVID: The 3.8 billion years of info is your assumption, not mine. 
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> dhw: 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.-But what was implied, as you know, is that I also favor dabbling with info added.