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The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

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Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#161

Post by [deleted] »

lebek wrote: post #110
jjk166 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evolution doesn't produce 1st part of the flagellum, second part of the flagellum, third part of the flagellum. It produces shitty flagellum, better flagellum, good flagellum. But the problem is we don't see the intermediate forms. So right now you might see a complicated flagellum that has a lot of highly specialized parts that all need eachother, but that is merely a refinement that took place after all the pieces…

I understand that, but it seems like even the MVP "shitty" flagellum would require many mutations that individually have no benefit. But I suppose with enough generations/parallelism you get enough stacking of useless mutations to reach the useful ones.

[deleted]

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#162

Post by pixl97 »

resource0x wrote: post #160
beders wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. But this is very well understood and researched. All it requires is mutations, time and selection pressure. The Blind Watchmaker is still a good read.

I'm curious: if tomorrow someone discovers that some parts of the genome are encoded with RSA cryptography, will the argument of "mutations, time and selection pressure" still hold? The same handwaving applies :-)

It 100% still holds.

The convergent evolution of pitcher plants is an example of this. There are a number of features that evolve to the same functionality in plants, and many of them have to work together to become fully functional. Yet we see in plants separated by vast distances and millions of years of separation that traits that are useless alone encode themselves and then will will have near spontaneous usefulness when some other gene evolves.

The laws of large numbers are not things the human mind really grasps well at all.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#163

Post by pixl97 »

prmph wrote: post #65
beders wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. But this is very well understood and researched. All it requires is mutations, time and selection pressure. The Blind Watchmaker is still a good read.

So if a monkeys bangs on keys forever it will eventually produce Shakespeare? I'm quite skeptical

Obviously yes, hence we are the monkeys banging on the keyboard. Evolution just boosted those that made interesting strings because it gave a survival advantage.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#164

Post by pixl97 »

jjk166 wrote: post #101
lebek wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's saying, random mutation wouldn't produce all required components at once. One mutation gives you a bit of a flagella, another gives you bit of a nose, but how does the flagella mutation survive to coexist with the nose mutation that makes it useful. I suspect the answer is that having flagella without a nose is still better than having no flagella. If so it suggests evolution isn't good at accessing grou…

Evolution doesn't produce 1st part of the flagellum, second part of the flagellum, third part of the flagellum. It produces shitty flagellum, better flagellum, good flagellum. But the problem is we don't see the intermediate forms. So right now you might see a complicated flagellum that has a lot of highly specialized parts that all need eachother, but that is merely a refinement that took place after all the pieces…

>Evolution doesn't produce 1st part of the flagellum

So this isn't exactly 100% true. Quite often the encoding of these things can sit in our DNA not activated and then pop up out of nowhere.

Scishow did an episode on this recently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzWOjP7hm2w

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#165

Post by pixl97 »

basil-rash wrote: post #142
Kerb_ wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's cool and all, but do you give an equal amount of credit to Young Earth Creationists and regular creationists? Because both are equally based in faith. It is equally possible some holy being made fake dinosaur bones 6000 years ago to fool us, and no amount of scientific rigor can compete with a being with the foresight to know exactly how we would test the bones. At what point is "umm we obviously have evidence…

It’s important to understand why we think the bones are over 6,000 years old, and especially consider what assumptions we make in determining that age. Most importantly, the time invariance of physics. Really it boils down to whether you believe the laws of physics we observe now have been constant throughout time. If you do you’re called an evolutionist, if you don’t you’re called a creationist. Neither side has any…

Then please provide a consistent with observations theory on how physics has changed with time. Or do you have to throw thermodynamics out the window because you've gone and screwed causality? One side has a whole bunch of consistent observational evidence. The other side has a lot of frantic handwaving and inconsistent data points.

The point being is, creationists have zero idea why they think 6,000 is some magic number in this case, other than bob said so in a book. But yea, books are written by men and men are liars. Even looking at things like RNA/DNA mutation rates in known species it's pretty damned easy to see that things have been around a whole lot longer than 6k years.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#166

Post by samatman »

basil-rash wrote: post #143
burnished wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh they really aren't. Its sort of a tired rhetorical ploy pitting them as faith based beliefs on equal intellectual footing though. Both are theories about the world. 'Creationism' as a theory really only became pure faith very recently as most specific claims attributable to it have been disproven or better explanations have been found. For a long time it was a perfectly cogent theory.

This is objectively false. Evolution explains absolutely nothing creationism doesn’t, and creationism explains a whole lot that evolution cannot. For instance, universal origins and the formation of cells.

Do you believe that the Bible is the literal and inspired word of God, correct in every detail?

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#167

Post by hahajk »

magicalhippo wrote: post #81
atticora wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a nice discussion of this in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! > I discovered a very strange phenomenon: I could ask a question, which the students would answer immediately. But the next time I would ask the question – the same subject, and the same question, as far as I could tell – they couldn’t answer it at all! > Then I say, “The main purpose of my talk is to demonstrate to you that no science is being t…

We had a student in class which was so brilliant at memorizing stuff. But each test had one or two questions where you had to put together the knowledge, not just regurgitate, and that student consistently failed those question on each and every test. Yet the student got top scores on each and every test, because the accumulated number of points was enough to get them into the top bracket. I was so annoyed with that,…

Measuring student outcomes is hard!

For example, do you think we should encourage students to study for tests, or should we encourage them to just show up? After all, if you understand it intuitively why would you need to study the night before?

Also, the act of testing changes the students being measured. As does the existence of a test in the future.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#168

Post by matthewdgreen »

mrguyorama wrote: post #123
swader999 wrote: post #4

Incredible to think how something this intricate with so many interdependent parts and integrated systems could have evolved.

Have you actually seen the results of things made with evolutionary algorithms? They ALWAYS produce "what the fuck, how could this be good" outcomes. From antenna that look like scifi props, to a computational system that somehow requires a supposedly unconnected transistor to be activated, evolutionary systems always find their way to a goal in an unimaginable fashion, because "random" mutations are basically the di…

Well, that is true. But presumably selection pressure —- namely, the need for things to work reliably and in an organized fashion —- imposes structure on systems that parallels the kind of organization that engineers use to make complicated systems work reliably. There’s a reason that complex organisms concentrate specific functions into organs with recognizable interfaces rather than scattering those cells widely throughout the body, in the same way that a human-engineered mechanism is usually constructed from parts. The fact that this allows for organ transplants isn’t really by design, but it’s a convenient outcome.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#169

Post by basil-rash »

pixl97 wrote: post #165
basil-rash wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s important to understand why we think the bones are over 6,000 years old, and especially consider what assumptions we make in determining that age. Most importantly, the time invariance of physics. Really it boils down to whether you believe the laws of physics we observe now have been constant throughout time. If you do you’re called an evolutionist, if you don’t you’re called a creationist. Neither side has any…

Then please provide a consistent with observations theory on how physics has changed with time. Or do you have to throw thermodynamics out the window because you've gone and screwed causality? One side has a whole bunch of consistent observational evidence. The other side has a lot of frantic handwaving and inconsistent data points. The point being is, creationists have zero idea why they think 6,000 is some magic nu…

> looking at things like RNA/DNA mutation rates in known species it's pretty damned easy to see that things have been around a whole lot longer than 6k years

Again, please understand the underlying assumptions you are making when you concoct statements like this. Namely: DNA/RNA started as a single form and has mutated at a constant rate since then. You have no evidence to support that, and I disagree with every component of it.

Re: The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis

#170

Post by basil-rash »

samatman wrote: post #166
basil-rash wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is objectively false. Evolution explains absolutely nothing creationism doesn’t, and creationism explains a whole lot that evolution cannot. For instance, universal origins and the formation of cells.

Do you believe that the Bible is the literal and inspired word of God, correct in every detail?

It's certainly inspired, but it has been subject to the chaotic nature of humanity, as has everything since the fall.
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