[continued from previous message]   
      
   >>>>> large and therefore needs explanation.   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>> Would you agree?   
   >>>>   
   >>>> Sure. But that explanation may rely on a fairly small number of   
   >>>> genetic differences. Why not? A small quantitative change can result   
   >>>> in a large qualitative change.   
   >>>   
   >>> Let's consider your appeal to nonlinearity. One version of this is   
   >>> saltationism or "hopeful monsters", but these are widely rejected as   
   >>> too improbable.   
   >>   
   >> No such appeal. The anatomical differences between humans and chimps   
   >> are fairly small. It's just that they're small differences with large   
   >> effect. A bigger brain results in greater capacity for language,   
   >> learning, larger social groups, etc. Fairly small changes in pelvic   
   >> bones result in an upright gait. And so on. The magnitude of these   
   >> changes can plausibly the results of changes at relatively few loci.   
   >> And they can easily be gradual, as cumulative changes to regulatory   
   >> sites can gradually alter the strength of transcription factor   
   >> binding, affecting gradually increasing alterations to development.   
   >>   
   >>> Another is developmental change, e.g. a mutation in regulatory genes,   
   >>> which I assume is what you have in mind.   
   >>   
   >> No. Hox genes generally act much earlier in development than would be   
   >> necessary to make the difference between humans and chimps. Also, it's   
   >> likely that changes to promoters are more important than changes to   
   >> the coding regions.   
   >>   
   >>> Hox genes in fruit flies demonstrate highly nonlinear morphological   
   >>> effects, e.g. legs grow where antennae should be, duplicated wings,   
   >>> etc. We could go down a rabbit-hole of macromutations and   
   >>> macroevolution.   
   >>>   
   >>> Another approach is to recognise that the gains of natural section   
   >>> are hard-won and gradual. Flicking switches during development cannot   
   >>> substitute for the slow and steady work of adaptation that   
   >>> progressively locks in new functionality. This work has to be done   
   >>> somewhere.   
   >>   
   >> Correct. Gradual evolution, by means of a few thousand genetic changes.   
   >>   
   >>> We agree that a large amount functionality has been created. The   
   >>> heavy lifting for this cannot be skipped or minimised. Real   
   >>> functionality (aka "the appearance of design") requires   
   >>> proportionate, progressive, trialling, selecting, fixing. Otherwise,   
   >>> you're at risk of admitting saltation through a back door.   
   >>   
   >> Certainly. No saltation proposed or necessary.   
   >>   
   >>> On another note, the accumulation of human knowledge and collective   
   >>> capability can rightly be called cultural evolution, in that these   
   >>> develop through competition between ideas and practices with   
   >>> selection of the "best". Interestingly (in the context of our   
   >>> discussion of chimps vs humans) this cultural evolution may be on the   
   >>> verge of AGI.   
   >>>   
   >>> The cultural evolution has itself arrived only by the slow, costly   
   >>> process described, accelerated at times by nonlinear perturbations   
   >>> such as the printing press or the semiconductor. To my point above, a   
   >>> similar principle and price applies.   
   >>   
   >> Sure. But of course the cultural changes are much more radical than   
   >> the morphological ones.   
   >>   
   >>>> Nothing at all to say about anything below?   
   >>>>   
   >>>>>>>>> 2. Chimps are uncannily intelligent, but human intelligence is   
   >>>>>>>>> on another level: abstract reasoning; symbolic language; long-   
   >>>>>>>>> term planning; mathematics, music, art; large cooperative   
   >>>>>>>>> societies; etc   
   >>>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>>> Chimps have some of those in embryonic form.   
   >>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>> And an earlier version of ChatGPT is ChatGPT 5.2 in embryonic   
   >>>>>>> form, just needing a few thousand bytes of code to evolve?   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> Your brain isn't a computer program.   
   >>>   
   >>> Agreed. I'm making a comparison by analogy and similar principle, and   
   >>> not suggesting structural likeness.   
   >>   
   >> Analogy requires similarity in relevant features. No such here.   
   >>   
   >> But how many genetic changes do you think were necessary to turn the   
   >> human-chimp ancestor into a modern human? Give me a ballpark.   
   >   
   > As I've argued here before, the genes/blueprint model is inadequate. My   
   > contention is the human genome alone contains insufficient information   
   > to specify a human. If this is correct, then we need to ask different   
   > questions.   
   >   
   > The human genome is 3.2 billion base pairs or 6.4 billion bits, 10% of   
   > which is not junk (according to some estimates). Therefore   
   >   
   >      functional information = 6.4 x 10^9 x 10% / 8 = 80 megabytes   
   >   
   > A photo on your phone is about 3 MB, so that's the equivalent of 27   
   > holiday snaps. 27 photos on your phone to specify arguably the most   
   > functionally complex object/system we know (as demonstrated by the   
   > capabilities listed elsewhere).   
      
   GIGO.  You know that we aren't talking about photos, but of evolving   
   systems.  Most of our genome consists of parasitic transposons and   
   retrovirus.  Even most of the sequence that doesn't look like transposon   
   sequence is just transposons and retrovirus that have decayed beyond   
   recognition because that decaying sequence has existed for literally   
   hundreds of millions of years.   
      
   It isn't just that.  Our genome evolve by whole genome duplication just   
   around half a billion years ago.  It is just a fact that most of the   
   genes that our lineage gained due to those genome duplications have been   
   lost.  Our cordate ancestor probably had around 15,000 coding genes, but   
   there was the R1 whole genome duplication and vertebrates evolved.   
   Jawless fish have evidence of this R1 genome duplication.  A second   
   whole genome duplication occurred in the ancestors of our lineage of   
   jawed fish.   
      
   A lot of our existing genes can be traced back to these genome   
   duplication events.  Most of the duplicated genes have been lost because   
   they were not needed, but a lot of them evolved different functions and   
   made our lineage into what it is today.   
      
   Doubling your genome is a common mode of speciation because it reduces   
   mixing with the parent species.   
   >   
   > I'm with people like Dennis Noble on this, at least in general in   
   > rejecting Dawkinsian reductionism for something like this:   
   >   
   > - No information flows from protein to nucleic acid sequence, but   
   > - Information alone is not causation   
   > - Control is not just sequence encoding   
      
   Information is constantly flowing back from protein to the DNA.  DNA   
   became embedded into the function of life.  The information that you   
   claim is flowing from the DNA only exists because of the information   
   that is flowing back and making replication and transciption possible.   
   Everything has to work within what is already working for the current   
   system.   
      
   It would apply to the first self replicators that may or may not have   
   relied on peptide bonds.  It would not have applied the nucleic acid   
   self replicators of the RNA world that would not have relied on peptide   
   bonds.  The RNA self replicators are expected to have evolved the   
   genetic code and would be responsible for creating the first encoded   
   proteins.  DNA would have evolved to be the genetic material because it   
   is more stably replicated, but does not seem to have the same ability to   
   form 3 dimensional RNA strucutures with a wide variety of enzymatic   
   functions, and the information to create the functional RNAs could be   
   more stably stored as genetic material.  The code would have evolved   
   after peptides were being made by ribozymes, likely, to store amino   
   acids within the cells (amino acids are needed to make RNA).   
      
      
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