Inference and its role in NS (General)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, January 19, 2011, 02:13 (5056 days ago) @ dhw

dhw
> Of greater importance is that the genomic researchers have no idea why one series of amino acids is functional and when altered is not. It appears that most mutations lab-created are deleterious. Lab research trying to mimic evolution doesn't work. With 20 amino acids that are essential, available, and all used in various sequences, and with functional segments using 100 amino acids or more, the odds (according to one reviewer) are 10^170 against finding a new functional segment de novo.[/i]
> 
> Many thanks for this comprehensive answer. In so many discussions, I find it galling that scientists continue to talk of evolution by natural selection, as if adaptation and innovation ... without which there would be no diversification and nothing to select from ... could be taken for granted. This is a linguistic device used, among others, by Dawkins, who claims that NS "explains the whole of life". It sounds as if epigenetics may account for adaptations(though giving something a name does not make it any the less complex or mysterious), but innovations and speciation remain a puzzle, unless we swallow the somewhat indigestible random mutations theory.-Evolution in this case (Dawkins) is inference based on evidence. You tripped into my "inference is not knowledge" dogma once again... (Just trying to point out instances where your thinking parallel's my own skepticism... I still don't think we're that different....)

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"