Predictions: Carlip on Theoretical Physics, Nyikos on Evolutionary Theory

[Peter Nyikos]

Shortly before Christmas, Prof. Steven Carlip challenged a
statement by Lyon O'Leodiean, a.k.a. Joe LyonLayden, and gave
his idea of what a scientific theory should be able to do.


On Monday, December 18, 2017 at 4:00:03 PM UTC-5, Steven Carlip wrote:
> On 12/17/17 4:10 PM, J.LyonLayden wrote:
>
> [...]
> > The Unmoved Mover is a scientific theory and explanation.

At this point, I've deleted a lot that I already addressed on
the thread where this exchange took place:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/xoFjEHnBJ3c/GMzWXoT4AwAJ
Subject: Re: And thus God spoke to J.LyonLayden
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2018 12:20:22 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <ed96fc3f-5b84-4790...@googlegroups.com>

Part of it was a bunch of statements by Carlip telling how he
could predict such and such given various models. I've left the
last one for this thread:

> If I start with Penrose's cyclic model, I can predict the presence of
> certain particular patterns of concentric circles in the CMB. What
> does your "Unmoved Mover" proposal predict about that kind of pattern?
>
> It's true that at the moment we have no strong observational evidence
> for any of the existing scientific proposals for the origin of the
> universe (although we have been able to rule some out). It's also
> true that the correct answer may be something we haven't yet thought
> of. But a scientific theory at least attempts to make predictions
> that can be tested, if not now then at least in the future. A real
> scientific theory should at least point us toward new places to look.

Indeed. I have recently laid great stress on how the so-called
Theory of Evolution is almost completely a theory of microevolution,
as set forth in the Modern Synthesis. This is a theory about
populations of potentially interbreeding individuals, and about
the change of frequency of alleles via mutation, recombination,
and natural selection.

It is a quasi-religious belief of many if not most people posting
to talk.origins that the evolution of life on earth is just
an extrapolation of these factors. One long-time regular in
talk.origins is so fanatical about this dogma that he darkly
hinted last month that I am a closet creationist because I
do not think extrapolation using the Modern Synthesis
constitutes a Theory of Evolution.

In fact, this quasi-religious dogma has precious little to say
about how the vast faunal world of today could have arisen
in a mere 750 million years from its humble unicellular beginnings.
I'll have more to say about this later on in this thread. Suffice
it to say for now that, even with 20-20 hindsight, it could
NOT have predicted most of the evolutionary innovations of those
millions of years.


CAUTION: By the Theory of Evolution I do NOT mean the proof beyond a
reasonable doubt that this evolution HAS taken place. That
proof is based on fossil evidence, comparative anatomy including
embryology, and molecular evidence. None of it owes anything
to the blind faith that changes in the frequency of alleles in populations
need only be extrapolated to account for what has actually happened.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, January 19, 2018 at 3:50:05 PM UTC-5, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, December 18, 2017 at 4:00:03 PM UTC-5, Steven Carlip wrote:
> > On 12/17/17 4:10 PM, J.LyonLayden wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> > > The Unmoved Mover is a scientific theory and explanation.

<snip>

> > But a scientific theory at least attempts to make predictions
> > that can be tested, if not now then at least in the future. A real
> > scientific theory should at least point us toward new places to look.
>
> Indeed. I have recently laid great stress on how the so-called
> Theory of Evolution is almost completely a theory of microevolution,
> as set forth in the Modern Synthesis. This is a theory about
> populations of potentially interbreeding individuals, and about
> the change of frequency of alleles via mutation, recombination,
> and natural selection.
>
> It is a quasi-religious belief of many if not most people posting
> to talk.origins that the evolution of life on earth is just
> an extrapolation of these factors. One long-time regular in
> talk.origins is so fanatical about this dogma that he darkly
> hinted last month that I am a closet creationist because I
> do not think extrapolation using the Modern Synthesis
> constitutes a Theory of Evolution.

I have promised to take this dogmatist's allegations apart
in February. If one compares what I write here to the post
where I made this promise, one can get a good idea of what
that might look like. I made the promise here:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/xCC5NGB-QHI/xhwqLMSRCwAJ
Subject: Re: The best evidence for intelligent design creationism according to
the Discovery Institute.
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2017 12:43:58 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <3c651af8-2111-45ee...@googlegroups.com>

> In fact, this quasi-religious dogma has precious little to say
> about how the vast faunal world of today could have arisen
> in a mere 750 million years from its humble unicellular beginnings.

Suppose our earth was inspected by probes sent here by a technological
species [1] a few centuries more advanced than ours, back 750 million
years ago.

Suppose the probes had found fossils of unicellular organisms dated
over 2 billion years earlier. Would they have dared predict that
in a mere 250 million years, well-coordinated [2] multicellular organisms
of over 20 phyla would be present on earth?

[1] I'm not saying those intelligent beings would have landed here;
in fact I'd say that was very unlikely. My scenario simply calls
for them to have studied data sent back by the probes.

[2] I'm talking about eumetazoans, including primitive fish, and
arthropods (e.g. trilobites) with bodies as well coordinated and
integrated as that of any arthropod of today.


Would they have predicted that in another 250 million years, there
would have evolved land animals weighing half a ton or more [3]
from those primitive fish that had little more than a notochord?
Or even from their descendants 100 million years later, fish whose
paired fins had bones far removed from their vertebral columns?

[3] I have in mind the aptly named Middle Permian reptile *Bradysaurus*.


And would they have predicted that, in another 250 million years,
there would evolve the first truly vertical biped, an intelligent
species similar to themselves?


And even if they did, would they be using an evolutinary theory
that merely extrapolates from the Modern Synthesis without going
into the HOW and WHY of macroevolution?


By the way, here is the closing paragraph of Carlip's post, picking
up where the quotation from him up there leaves off:

> > Your "Unmoved Mover" proposal, as far as I can tell, doesn't do that.
> > Perhaps I'm wrong, though. Can you give an example of *anything* that
> > we might observe in the future that would be incompatible with your
> > proposal, that would demonstrate that it was wrong?
>
> > Steve Carlip

Similarly, can anyone give an example of *anything* that might
evolve in the future that is physically possible but is incompatible
with extrapolation from the present using ONLY the Modern Synthesis?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

After I did the first two posts to this thread, I recalled a highly
relevant article by the renowned biologist, Gerd B. Muller, of the
Department of Theoretical Biology, University of Vienna, Austria,

"Why an extended evolutionary synthesis is necessary"
-- Interface Focus 7: 20170015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rfs.2017.0015

The following excerpt from page 3 represents my opinion
better than my words to this thread do:

____________________________________________________________

As can be noted from the listed principles, current evolutionary theory
is predominantly oriented towards a genetic explanation of variation,
and, except for some minor semantic modifications, this has
not changed over the past seven or eight decades. Whatever lip service
is paid to taking into account other factors than those traditionally
accepted, we find that the theory, as presented in extant writings,
concentrates on a limited set of evolutionary explananda,
excluding the majority of those mentioned among the explanatory goals above.
The theory performs well with regard to the issues it concentrates on,
providing testable and abundantly confirmed predictions on
the dynamics of genetic variation in evolving populations,
on the gradual variation and adaptation of phenotypic traits,
and on certain genetic features of speciation.

If the explanation would stop here, no controversy would exist.
But it has become habitual in evolutionary biology to take
population genetics as the privileged type of explanation of
all evolutionary phenomena, thereby negating the fact that,
on the one hand, not all of its predictions can be confirmed
under all circumstances, and, on the other hand, a wealth
of evolutionary phenomena remains excluded. For instance,
the theory largely avoids the question of how the complex
organizations of organismal structure, physiology, development
or behavior -- whose variation it describes -- actually arise in evolution,
and it also provides no adequate means for including factors
that are not part of the population genetic framework,
such as developmental, systems theoretical, ecological
or cultural influences.

============================================================

Peter Nyikos

[erik simpson]

The link

http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rfs.2017.0015

doesn't work, but the article can be read or downloaded here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5566817/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, January 19, 2018 at 7:45:03 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> On Friday, January 19, 2018 at 2:45:04 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > After I did the first two posts to this thread, I recalled a highly
> > relevant article by the renowned biologist, Gerd B. Muller,

That should be an umlaut u in Muller, but my keyboard doesn't provide
that easily.

Sorry for the typo. "rfs" should have read "rsfs" as in the now obsolete
RSFSR -- still a good mnemonic for those of us old-timers who were
geography buffs in their childhood. So the following link works:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015

> doesn't work, but the article can be read or downloaded here:
>
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5566817/

Thanks for posting this link and calling the error to my attention. The DOI
takes one directly to the article as it appeared in the journal Interface
Focus, but one can get to home page of the journal from your posted
url with one click.

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Fri, 19 Jan 2018 13:34:42 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

[...]

>By the way, here is the closing paragraph of Carlip's post, picking
>up where the quotation from him up there leaves off:
>
>> > Your "Unmoved Mover" proposal, as far as I can tell, doesn't do that.
>> > Perhaps I'm wrong, though. Can you give an example of *anything* that
>> > we might observe in the future that would be incompatible with your
>> > proposal, that would demonstrate that it was wrong?
>>
>> > Steve Carlip
>
>Similarly, can anyone give an example of *anything* that might
>evolve in the future that is physically possible but is incompatible
>with extrapolation from the present using ONLY the Modern Synthesis?

You presume a false equivalence. An Unmoved Mover would be a
supernatural Agent, by definition, capable of creating physically
impossible things, by definition. Predictions using the Modern
Synthesis would be limited to reality, a substantially smaller set of
possibilities.

>Peter Nyikos
>Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>University of South Carolina
>http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

--
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Attributed to Voltaire

[T Pagano]

On Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:45:40 -0800, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> Shortly before Christmas, Prof. Steven Carlip challenged a statement by
> Lyon O'Leodiean, a.k.a. Joe LyonLayden, and gave his idea of what a
> scientific theory should be able to do.
>
>
> On Monday, December 18, 2017 at 4:00:03 PM UTC-5, Steven Carlip wrote:
>> On 12/17/17 4:10 PM, J.LyonLayden wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>> > The Unmoved Mover is a scientific theory and explanation.

Since you didn't place this line in some sort of context (as you did with
Carlip) I'm left to assume that LyonLayden considers this line a
standalone premise. From a YEC and Christian position (the pigeon hole I
place myself) this bald premise (if that's what it is) is pretty
obviously false (the Unmoved Mover is not a theory,scientific or
otherwise) and is unfruitful (as a some broad brush labeled
"explanation").

>
> At this point, I've deleted a lot that I already addressed on the thread
> where this exchange took place:
>
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/xoFjEHnBJ3c/GMzWXoT4AwAJ
> Subject: Re: And thus God spoke to J.LyonLayden Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2018
> 12:20:22 -0800 (PST)
> Message-ID: <ed96fc3f-5b84-4790...@googlegroups.com>
>
> Part of it was a bunch of statements by Carlip telling how he could
> predict such and such given various models. I've left the last one for
> this thread:
>
>> If I start with Penrose's cyclic model, I can predict the presence of
>> certain particular patterns of concentric circles in the CMB. What
>> does your "Unmoved Mover" proposal predict about that kind of pattern?
>>
>> It's true that at the moment we have no strong observational evidence
>> for any of the existing scientific proposals for the origin of the
>> universe (although we have been able to rule some out). It's also true
>> that the correct answer may be something we haven't yet thought of.
>> But a scientific theory at least attempts to make predictions that can
>> be tested, if not now then at least in the future. A real scientific
>> theory should at least point us toward new places to look.

Ignoring the fact that the significance of the concentric circles in
Penrose's Model was disputed almost immediately I would nonetheless agree
with Carlip in comparison to Lyonlayden's bald premise. Surely LyonLayden
did better than one line.

>
> Indeed. I have recently laid great stress on how the so-called Theory of
> Evolution is almost completely a theory of microevolution,
> as set forth in the Modern Synthesis. This is a theory about populations
> of potentially interbreeding individuals, and about the change of
> frequency of alleles via mutation, recombination,
> and natural selection.
>
> It is a quasi-religious belief of many if not most people posting to
> talk.origins that the evolution of life on earth is just an
> extrapolation of these factors. One long-time regular in talk.origins is
> so fanatical about this dogma that he darkly hinted last month that I am
> a closet creationist because I do not think extrapolation using the
> Modern Synthesis constitutes a Theory of Evolution.
>
> In fact, this quasi-religious dogma has precious little to say about how
> the vast faunal world of today could have arisen in a mere 750 million
> years from its humble unicellular beginnings.
> I'll have more to say about this later on in this thread. Suffice it to
> say for now that, even with 20-20 hindsight, it could NOT have predicted
> most of the evolutionary innovations of those millions of years.

I couldn't agree more but this isn't Carlip's field of expertise.

[Ernest Major]

On 21/01/2018 17:38, T Pagano wrote:
>> On Monday, December 18, 2017 at 4:00:03 PM UTC-5, Steven Carlip wrote:
>>> On 12/17/17 4:10 PM, J.LyonLayden wrote:
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>> The Unmoved Mover is a scientific theory and explanation.
>
> Since you didn't place this line in some sort of context (as you did with
> Carlip) I'm left to assume that LyonLayden considers this line a
> standalone premise. From a YEC and Christian position (the pigeon hole I
> place myself) this bald premise (if that's what it is) is pretty
> obviously false (the Unmoved Mover is not a theory,scientific or
> otherwise) and is unfruitful (as a some broad brush labeled
> "explanation").
>

It turned out that J. Lyon Layden considers philosophy to be science,
contrary to current usage. If I recall correctly he also overestimated
the degree of support within philosophy for the Unmoved Mover.

On the other hand you might like to confer with your fellow YEC
Christians, to check that your perspective is shared.

--
alias Ernest Major

[T Pagano]

On Sun, 21 Jan 2018 18:56:19 +0000, Ernest Major wrote:

> On 21/01/2018 17:38, T Pagano wrote:
>>> On Monday, December 18, 2017 at 4:00:03 PM UTC-5, Steven Carlip wrote:
>>>> On 12/17/17 4:10 PM, J.LyonLayden wrote:
>>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>>> The Unmoved Mover is a scientific theory and explanation.
>>
>> Since you didn't place this line in some sort of context (as you did
>> with Carlip) I'm left to assume that LyonLayden considers this line a
>> standalone premise. From a YEC and Christian position (the pigeon hole
>> I place myself) this bald premise (if that's what it is) is pretty
>> obviously false (the Unmoved Mover is not a theory,scientific or
>> otherwise) and is unfruitful (as a some broad brush labeled
>> "explanation").
>>
>>
> It turned out that J. Lyon Layden considers philosophy to be science,
> contrary to current usage.

If LyonLayden asserts the line attributed to him by Nyikos (above) then
he has bigger problems than that. And I don't think "God" would have
been considered a "theory" even when the practice of science was labeled
"natural philosophy."

>If I recall correctly he also overestimated
> the degree of support within philosophy for the Unmoved Mover.

You took a poll, did you?

> On the other hand you might like to confer with your fellow YEC
> Christians, to check that your perspective is shared.

Since when have I ever resorted to consensus?

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

This author makes the same blunder that every biologist makes, that is population genetics only consists of the mathematics of survival of the fittest. He says that here:
"The formalized core of the MS theory was—and still is—population genetics [35], a mathematical account of gene frequency dynamics in populations of organisms."
Survival of the fittest does not create new alleles. This process removes alleles of the less fit variants. The creation of more fit variants requires rmns which are not dependent on gene frequencies but the absolute number of replications a variant can do.
.
So unless the field of biology is going to remove the last vestige of hard mathematical science from its curriculum, they will have to come to grips with the effect of the multiplication rule of probabilities and its effect on the production of more fit variants.

[Peter Nyikos]

Welcome back, Tony! How long have you been gone? Google Groups
only shows your history starting this month, but I know you
were active four years ago.

There are those who like to pretend you and I are similar
in lots of ways, but they either don't say how or the things
they say describe themselves better than they describe
me (or you, perhaps) -- or are outright false.

On Sunday, January 21, 2018 at 12:40:02 PM UTC-5, T Pagano wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:45:40 -0800, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> > Shortly before Christmas, Prof. Steven Carlip challenged a statement by
> > Lyon O'Leodiean, a.k.a. Joe LyonLayden, and gave his idea of what a
> > scientific theory should be able to do.
> >
> >
> > On Monday, December 18, 2017 at 4:00:03 PM UTC-5, Steven Carlip wrote:
> >> On 12/17/17 4:10 PM, J.LyonLayden wrote:
> >>
> >> [...]
> >> > The Unmoved Mover is a scientific theory and explanation.
>
>
> Since you didn't place this line in some sort of context (as you did with
> Carlip) I'm left to assume that LyonLayden considers this line a
> standalone premise.

The context is the thread from which I posted the url below.

> From a YEC and Christian position (the pigeon hole I
> place myself) this bald premise (if that's what it is) is pretty
> obviously false (the Unmoved Mover is not a theory,scientific or
> otherwise)

It was a philosophical concept endorsed by Aristotle and harnessed
to Christian theology by Aquinas. The harnessing is controversial
to this day. Some Christian theologians follow Aquinas in equating
an Unmoved Mover with the Christian God, others do not. I suspect
the latter are in the majority.

> and is unfruitful (as a some broad brush labeled
> "explanation").

In its original form, yes. But the Christian God imposed all kinds of
voluntary constraints on Himself according to the NT, when it came
to dealing with humans.

If Joe were to opt for the Christian God, he could probably make
lots of predictions as to what God WOULD not do, nor allow, even if God
COULD do or allow them.

I don't know about Allah, though. The Koran seems not to have Allah
put any constraints on Himself, apart from not having a Son.

> >
> > At this point, I've deleted a lot that I already addressed on the thread
> > where this exchange took place:
> >
> > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/xoFjEHnBJ3c/GMzWXoT4AwAJ
> > Subject: Re: And thus God spoke to J.LyonLayden Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2018
> > 12:20:22 -0800 (PST)
> > Message-ID: <ed96fc3f-5b84-4790...@googlegroups.com>

If you navigate back from the post I've linked, you can find lots from
Joe, including a reply to the same Carlip post to which I was replying
there, and here, and Carlip's response to that. I can't recall offhand
whether Joe replied in turn.

> > Part of it was a bunch of statements by Carlip telling how he could
> > predict such and such given various models.

<snip of something to be dealt with in another reply>

> >> But a scientific theory at least attempts to make predictions that can
> >> be tested, if not now then at least in the future. A real scientific
> >> theory should at least point us toward new places to look.

See above. There are doomsday accounts in science fiction that would
falsify some predictions made about the Christian God, and others
could be concocted.

Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

[Peter Nyikos]

...was missing one letter. Correct is:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015

> > doesn't work, but the article can be read or downloaded here:
> >
> > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5566817/
>
> This author makes the same blunder that every biologist makes,

Methinks you have not read more than 5% of the paper, Alan. Muller is
ATTACKING the so-called "Modern Synthesis" (MS) and has lots
to say about genetics that goes beyond what
the MS has to say about it, later on in the paper.

> that is population genetics only consists of the mathematics of survival of the fittest. He says that here:

> "The formalized core of the MS theory was -- and still is -- population genetics [35], a mathematical account of gene frequency dynamics in populations of organisms."

Muller isn't stupid enough to say what you ascribe to him, nor
even to endorse this "formalized core." See above.

> Survival of the fittest does not create new alleles. This process removes alleles of the less fit variants.

Do you really think Muller doesn't know this? You REALLY need to take
a good long look at his paper, now that you have two links that work.
They take you to slightly different places but you can find the full
paper in both.

> The creation of more fit variants requires rmns which are not dependent on gene frequencies but the absolute number of replications a variant can do.
> .

Surprise! Muller does NOT think rmns describe evolution. He
especially disputes the r (random) part.

> So unless the field of biology is going to remove the last vestige of hard mathematical science from its curriculum, they will have to come to grips with the effect of the multiplication rule of probabilities and its effect on the production of more fit variants.

The multiplication rule of probabilities is only as good
as the data fed into it. Muller has oodles to say about all the
branches of biology that he wants to incorporate into the
EES, and which help us to see just what the data are really like.


Never heard of the EES? You have a lot of interesting reading ahead
of you, if you click on one of those links.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

PS I did find one glaring shortcoming in Muller's paper, but it has nothing
to do with anything you've ever tried to deal with.

Curious? Just ask and I'll tell you what it is.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

It's a mishmash of arguments that try to counter the mathematical facts of life. Here's a summary of his argument:
"The limitations of the MS theory are not only highlighted by the criticisms directed against several of its traditional tenets but also by the failure to address some of the most important phenomena of organismal evolution. The question, for instance, of how complex phenotypic organizations arise in evolution is sidestepped by the population theoretical account, as is the reciprocal influence of these features of higher levels of organization on the evolutionary process. Indeed, the MS theory lacks a theory of organization that can account for the characteristic features of phenotypic evolution, such as novelty, modularity, homology, homoplasy or the origin of lineage-defining body plans. As will be shown below, evo-devo, niche construction, systems biology and other areas harbour the capacity to address at least certain aspects of these topics where the classical theory fails."
But perhaps you think that "novelty, modularity, homology, homoplasy or the origin of lineage-defining body plans" somehow cause the multiplication rule of probabilities disappear for joint independent events occurring. And that's the mathematical principle which governs the joint probability of two microevolutionary changes occurring on a lineage.

>
>
> > that is population genetics only consists of the mathematics of survival of the fittest. He says that here:
> > "The formalized core of the MS theory was -- and still is -- population genetics [35], a mathematical account of gene frequency dynamics in populations of organisms."
>
> Muller isn't stupid enough to say what you ascribe to him, nor
> even to endorse this "formalized core." See above.
>
> > Survival of the fittest does not create new alleles. This process removes alleles of the less fit variants.
>
> Do you really think Muller doesn't know this? You REALLY need to take
> a good long look at his paper, now that you have two links that work.
> They take you to slightly different places but you can find the full
> paper in both.

But the survival of the fittest does not improve fitness. Improving fitness is a different physical phenomenon governed by different mathematical principles. You won't find the mathematics of improved fitness in any population genetics texts at this time.

>
>
> > The creation of more fit variants requires rmns which are not dependent on gene frequencies but the absolute number of replications a variant can do.
> > .
>
> Surprise! Muller does NOT think rmns describe evolution. He
> especially disputes the r (random) part.

rmns is the phenomenon which improves fitness against selection conditions by genetic transformation. Before Muller tries to formulate a new model for evolution, he should make an attempt to understand the empirical evidence of how genetic transforms work.

>
>
> > So unless the field of biology is going to remove the last vestige of hard mathematical science from its curriculum, they will have to come to grips with the effect of the multiplication rule of probabilities and its effect on the production of more fit variants.
>
> The multiplication rule of probabilities is only as good
> as the data fed into it. Muller has oodles to say about all the
> branches of biology that he wants to incorporate into the
> EES, and which help us to see just what the data are really like.

You can extend evolutionary synthesis as far as you want but it will never go far enough to negate the multiplication rule for computing the joint probability of random independent events occurring. Muller can do oodles to try to obscure the mathematical facts of life but these facts won't disappear in the fog he produces.

>
>
> Never heard of the EES? You have a lot of interesting reading ahead
> of you, if you click on one of those links.

Why don't you tell us how EES makes reptiles grow feathers? Let's make it simpler for you. Tell us how EES explains how drug resistance occurs. It's simple mathematics.

>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> University of South Carolina
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
>
> PS I did find one glaring shortcoming in Muller's paper, but it has nothing
> to do with anything you've ever tried to deal with.
>
> Curious? Just ask and I'll tell you what it is.

Everybody knows you didn't quite get the mathematics of probability theory so you wouldn't recognize if Muller had more than one glaring shortcoming.

[Peter Nyikos]

> > http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015

also available at:
> > > > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5566817/

I think you are deliberately ignoring what I quoted above, beginning
the following unsupportable allegation:

> > > This author makes the same blunder that every biologist makes,

I may actually have gone easy on you when I wrote:

> > Methinks you have not read more than 5% of the paper, Alan. Muller is
> > ATTACKING the so-called "Modern Synthesis" (MS) and has lots
> > to say about genetics that goes beyond what
> > the MS has to say about it, later on in the paper.


> It's a mishmash of arguments that try to counter the mathematical facts of life.

What mathematical facts of life? The only one you care about where
the main purpose of talk.origins is concerned, is the "fact"
that God poofed whole animals into existence.

Or do you believe, instead, that God just
kept guiding evolution along by making the probability
of certain mutations equal to 1 by making them happen, and then
also manipulating the environment so that the mutations would be
successful?

Which is it? Do you have the minimal backbone to answer this
question one way or another?


Either way, you pretend that MS is the way "evilutionists" HAVE
to think, and you resent it when someone like Muller tries
to improve on MS.

> Here's a summary of his argument:

It is only summarizing an argument against MS theory, and not arguments
for what he wants to put in its place -- he is only describing these,
replacements, not arguing for them, in what you have cherry-picked:

> "The limitations of the MS theory are not only highlighted by the criticisms directed against several of its traditional tenets but also by the failure to address some of the most important phenomena of organismal evolution.

>"The question, for instance, of how complex phenotypic organizations arise in evolution is sidestepped by the population theoretical account, as is the reciprocal influence of these features of higher levels of organization on the evolutionary process.

> "Indeed, the MS theory lacks a theory of organization that can account for the characteristic features of phenotypic evolution, such as novelty, modularity, homology, homoplasy or the origin of lineage-defining body plans. As will be shown below, evo-devo, niche construction, systems biology and other areas harbour the capacity to address at least certain aspects of these topics where the classical theory fails."

You now insult Muller and me by setting up the following straw man:

> But perhaps you think that "novelty, modularity, homology, homoplasy or the origin of lineage-defining body plans" somehow cause the multiplication rule of probabilities disappear for joint independent events occurring.

I don't think any such thing, and I resent your insulting way
of ignoring the point of what Muller wrote.

It is the individual probabilities themselves that are
the main thrust of Muller's heroic attempt to put evolutionary
theory into a form that goes beyond the theory of MICROevolution
that MS (the sixty year old Modern Synthesis) represents.

> And that's the mathematical principle which governs the joint probability of two microevolutionary changes occurring on a lineage.

Yes, and if God makes the probabilities both 1, you don't need to worry
about the principle.

That's what your hobbyhorse is really all about, as
far as macroevolution is concerned, isn't it?


Now, when talking about medicine, it actually has something
to say about recommended procedure, but I haven't seen
anyone here try to dispute what you get from the multiplication rule.
Have you?

> > > that is population genetics only consists of the mathematics of survival of the fittest. He says that here:
> > > "The formalized core of the MS theory was -- and still is -- population genetics [35], a mathematical account of gene frequency dynamics in populations of organisms."
> >
> > Muller isn't stupid enough to say what you ascribe to him, nor
> > even to endorse this "formalized core." See above.
> >
> > > Survival of the fittest does not create new alleles. This process removes alleles of the less fit variants.
> >
> > Do you really think Muller doesn't know this? You REALLY need to take
> > a good long look at his paper, now that you have two links that work.
> > They take you to slightly different places but you can find the full
> > paper in both.

Again you ignore what is written, and go off on a private tangent:

> But the survival of the fittest does not improve fitness.

That's because MS has arbitrarily defined "fitness" so narrowly
that it only compares members of one species to other members
of the SAME species.

But in fact, survival of the fittest members of a species tends
to improve the fitness of the species as a whole, only the
Procrustean Bed of MS doesn't allow biologists to use "fitness"
in the latter sense.


Now, could you get around to talking about what Muller wrote?


Concluded in next reply, to be done soon after I have seen that
this one has posted.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 7:40:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 10:10:06 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:

> Improving fitness is a different physical phenomenon governed by different mathematical principles. You won't find the mathematics of imp\

roved fitness in any population genetics texts at this time.

What about published papers? Are you sure you've adequately surveyed
them? Have you been over the ones referenced by Muller?

> > > The creation of more fit variants requires rmns which are not dependent on gene frequencies but the absolute number of replications a variant can do.
> > > .
> >
> > Surprise! Muller does NOT think rmns describe evolution. He
> > especially disputes the r (random) part.

> rmns is the phenomenon which improves fitness against selection conditions by genetic transformation.

You really seem wedded to the "random" part. Muller talks a lot about
why it is not useful to use the word in a simplistic way. For instance,
the phenotype may have plenty to do through epigenetic evolution
that prepares the ground for a genetic mutation which might otherwise be
fatal, never mind whether it improves the fitness of the mutated
individual.


You really need to read Muller's paper in detail instead of cherry-picking
and then making unsupportable insults like the following:

> Before Muller tries to formulate a new model for evolution,
> he should make an attempt to understand the empirical evidence of how genetic transforms work.

or insults like the following:

> > > So unless the field of biology is going to remove the last vestige of hard mathematical science from its curriculum, they will have to come to grips with the effect of the multiplication rule of probabilities and its effect on the production of more fit variants.
> >
> > The multiplication rule of probabilities is only as good
> > as the data fed into it. Muller has oodles to say about all the
> > branches of biology that he wants to incorporate into the
> > EES, and which help us to see just what the data are really like.

> You can extend evolutionary synthesis as far as you want but it will never go far enough to negate the multiplication rule for computing the joint probability of random independent events occurring.

The rule isn't negated; the data profoundly affect the individual
probabilities, and this is something you will never understand
until you start to read Muller without prejudice.

> Muller can do oodles to try to obscure the mathematical facts of life but these facts won't disappear in the fog he produces.

Heaping insults on insults like this is indicative of closed-minded
prejudice.

> >
> > Never heard of the EES? You have a lot of interesting reading ahead
> > of you, if you click on one of those links.

> Why don't you tell us how EES makes reptiles grow feathers?

EES doesn't make anything inevitable, least of all the growing
of feathers by animals that resemble birds far more than they
resemble any living reptiles.

Unlike you, I ask questions that are formulated fairly. For instance:

Why don't you tell us whether God poofed birds and feathers into
existence, or merely made the mutations that produced them have
a probability of one?

> Let's make it simpler for you. Tell us how EES explains how drug resistance occurs. It's simple mathematics.

EES is not needed for the simple mathematics that has been worked
out for this. But it may be needed to tell you how
of bacteria and viruses evolved to where they are able to have
the deleterious effects that make drug treatments necessary
in the first place.

> > PS I did find one glaring shortcoming in Muller's paper, but it has nothing
> > to do with anything you've ever tried to deal with.
> >
> > Curious? Just ask and I'll tell you what it is.

> Everybody knows you didn't quite get the mathematics of probability theory

Stop trolling. You have no evidence for this insult, none whatsoever.

> so you wouldn't recognize if Muller had more than one glaring shortcoming.

I don't think you can actually document a single one. You certainly have NOT
documented a single one, whereas I can tell you exactly where to find the
big weakness I have found. It is in the middle of Section 3.4.

See if you can spot it.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[T Pagano]

On Mon, 22 Jan 2018 07:11:45 -0800, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> Welcome back, Tony! How long have you been gone? Google Groups only
> shows your history starting this month, but I know you were active four
> years ago.

Thanks for the welcome back.

I took a hiatus beginning sometime in 2012 until this month.

>
> There are those who like to pretend you and I are similar in lots of
> ways, but they either don't say how or the things they say describe
> themselves better than they describe me (or you, perhaps) -- or are
> outright false.

.. . .and/or they find it easier to build a single straw-man and paint all
our names on it.

>
> On Sunday, January 21, 2018 at 12:40:02 PM UTC-5, T Pagano wrote:
>> On Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:45:40 -0800, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> > Shortly before Christmas, Prof. Steven Carlip challenged a statement
>> > by Lyon O'Leodiean, a.k.a. Joe LyonLayden, and gave his idea of what
>> > a scientific theory should be able to do.
>> >
>> >
>> > On Monday, December 18, 2017 at 4:00:03 PM UTC-5, Steven Carlip
>> > wrote:
>> >> On 12/17/17 4:10 PM, J.LyonLayden wrote:
>> >>
>> >> [...]
>> >> > The Unmoved Mover is a scientific theory and explanation.
>>
>>
>> Since you didn't place this line in some sort of context (as you did
>> with Carlip) I'm left to assume that LyonLayden considers this line a
>> standalone premise.
>
> The context is the thread from which I posted the url below.

I suspected I would be arguing from ignorance without reading it.

>
>
>> From a YEC and Christian position (the pigeon hole I
>> place myself) this bald premise (if that's what it is) is pretty
>> obviously false (the Unmoved Mover is not a theory,scientific or
>> otherwise)
>
> It was a philosophical concept endorsed by Aristotle and harnessed to
> Christian theology by Aquinas. The harnessing is controversial to this
> day. Some Christian theologians follow Aquinas in equating an Unmoved
> Mover with the Christian God, others do not. I suspect the latter are in
> the majority.

>
>> and is unfruitful (as a some broad brush labeled "explanation").
>
> In its original form, yes. But the Christian God imposed all kinds of
> voluntary constraints on Himself according to the NT, when it came to
> dealing with humans.
>
> If Joe were to opt for the Christian God, he could probably make lots of
> predictions as to what God WOULD not do, nor allow, even if God COULD do
> or allow them.
>
> I don't know about Allah, though. The Koran seems not to have Allah put
> any constraints on Himself, apart from not having a Son.

You've piqued my interest to follow the link and read.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

> > > http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015
>
> also available at:
> > > > > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5566817/
>
> I think you are deliberately ignoring what I quoted above, beginning
> the following unsupportable allegation:

Do you mean this part of the quote? "The theory performs well with regard to the issues it concentrates on, providing testable and abundantly confirmed predictions on the dynamics of genetic variation in evolving populations, on the gradual variation and adaptation of phenotypic traits, and on certain genetic features of speciation. "
So how does the theory explain why combination therapy works for the treatment of hiv.

>
> > > > This author makes the same blunder that every biologist makes,
>
>

> I may actually have gone easy on you when I wrote:

Peter, I'm going easy on you. But let's push a little harder by pointing out that you have not mastered the mathematics of probability theory. The reason I know this is that you think the at least one rule is a trick and you can't recognize when events are independent. Remember your claim about the frequency of the Down's mutation? You need to pull out your probability theory text and review this subject if you want to carry on an intelligent conversation on stochastic processes. Otherwise, I'll think I'm discussing the topic with jillery.

>
> > > Methinks you have not read more than 5% of the paper, Alan. Muller is
> > > ATTACKING the so-called "Modern Synthesis" (MS) and has lots
> > > to say about genetics that goes beyond what
> > > the MS has to say about it, later on in the paper.
>
>
> > It's a mishmash of arguments that try to counter the mathematical facts of life.
>

> What mathematical facts of life? The only one you care about where
> the main purpose of talk.origins is concerned, is the "fact"
> that God poofed whole animals into existence.

Don't be silly. I'm trying to explain to you how rmns works. And the joint probability of two independent events occurring is computed using the multiplication rule. You need to learn how to compute the probability of each event. I sent you the papers. Review introductory probability theory and when you have a basic understanding of the subject, you will understand my papers.

>
> Or do you believe, instead, that God just
> kept guiding evolution along by making the probability
> of certain mutations equal to 1 by making them happen, and then
> also manipulating the environment so that the mutations would be
> successful?

I'm explaining to you how rmns works and the main governing mathematical principle for this phenomenon is the multiplication rule of probabilities. The papers I send you explain why combination therapy works for the treatment of hiv, how the Kishony experiment works, how the Lenski experiment works, how any real, measurable and repeatable example of rmns works. Quit piddling around and learn how the mathematics of stochastic process work because that is what biologists have failed to do.

>
> Which is it? Do you have the minimal backbone to answer this
> question one way or another?

Quit whining and prove you the chops to do a mathematics problem.

>
>
> Either way, you pretend that MS is the way "evilutionists" HAVE
> to think, and you resent it when someone like Muller tries
> to improve on MS.

Muller makes a crucial scientific blunder when he claims gene frequency is sufficient to explain population genetics. Gene frequency is the correct measure for the survival of the fittest and random recombination but it is not the correct variable to determine improvement in fitness.

>
>
> > Here's a summary of his argument:
>

> It is only summarizing an argument against MS theory, and not arguments
> for what he wants to put in its place -- he is only describing these,
> replacements, not arguing for them, in what you have cherry-picked:

I've chosen the crucial argument which determines the validity of the theory of evolution and that is the mathematics of population genetics. Consider this analogy. Let's say that I claim that Newton's laws are incorrect. I claim that a more massive rock is easier to move than a less massive rock. And I claim that if I find the correct environment and the correct conditions I can prove it. So I choose an icy mountain and I put the more massive rock on top of the mountain and I claim how easy it is to move. Of course, anyone with an introductory understanding of physics will recognize the nonsense. In the same way, Muller claiming all these environmental aspects of evolution will not change the underlying mathematics which governs rmns.

>
> > "The limitations of the MS theory are not only highlighted by the criticisms directed against several of its traditional tenets but also by the failure to address some of the most important phenomena of organismal evolution.
>
> >"The question, for instance, of how complex phenotypic organizations arise in evolution is sidestepped by the population theoretical account, as is the reciprocal influence of these features of higher levels of organization on the evolutionary process.
>
> > "Indeed, the MS theory lacks a theory of organization that can account for the characteristic features of phenotypic evolution, such as novelty, modularity, homology, homoplasy or the origin of lineage-defining body plans. As will be shown below, evo-devo, niche construction, systems biology and other areas harbour the capacity to address at least certain aspects of these topics where the classical theory fails."
>
>

> You now insult Muller and me by setting up the following straw man:
>

> > But perhaps you think that "novelty, modularity, homology, homoplasy or the origin of lineage-defining body plans" somehow cause the multiplication rule of probabilities disappear for joint independent events occurring.
>
>

> I don't think any such thing, and I resent your insulting way
> of ignoring the point of what Muller wrote.

You are the one who posted the link, I'm just seeing if you can make sense out of Muller's mishmash. You don't.

>
> It is the individual probabilities themselves that are
> the main thrust of Muller's heroic attempt to put evolutionary
> theory into a form that goes beyond the theory of MICROevolution
> that MS (the sixty year old Modern Synthesis) represents.

Read my papers and I show you how to compute the individual probabilities. But you have to master introductory probability theory first. So far you haven't demonstrated that skill.

>
> > And that's the mathematical principle which governs the joint probability of two microevolutionary changes occurring on a lineage.
>

> Yes, and if God makes the probabilities both 1, you don't need to worry
> about the principle.

You sound like jillery.

>
> That's what your hobbyhorse is really all about, as
> far as macroevolution is concerned, isn't it?

It's no hobbyhorse and you would realize this if you mastered introductory probability theory. I noticed you don't teach that subject. Lucky for your students.

>
>
> Now, when talking about medicine, it actually has something
> to say about recommended procedure, but I haven't seen
> anyone here try to dispute what you get from the multiplication rule.
> Have you?

The dispute is that the reptiles grow feathers crowd think that rmns works differently in the medical field, agriculture, Lenski experiment than out in the real world. Why don't you present some real, measurable and repeatable examples of rmns that contradict the mathematics I've presented. You won't because they don't exist.

>
> > > > that is population genetics only consists of the mathematics of survival of the fittest. He says that here:
> > > > "The formalized core of the MS theory was -- and still is -- population genetics [35], a mathematical account of gene frequency dynamics in populations of organisms."
> > >
> > > Muller isn't stupid enough to say what you ascribe to him, nor
> > > even to endorse this "formalized core." See above.
> > >
> > > > Survival of the fittest does not create new alleles. This process removes alleles of the less fit variants.
> > >
> > > Do you really think Muller doesn't know this? You REALLY need to take
> > > a good long look at his paper, now that you have two links that work.
> > > They take you to slightly different places but you can find the full
> > > paper in both.
>
>

> Again you ignore what is written, and go off on a private tangent:

What you call a private tangent is the singular most important principle in understanding how rmns works. Muller only presents a mishmash.

>
> > But the survival of the fittest does not improve fitness.
>

> That's because MS has arbitrarily defined "fitness" so narrowly
> that it only compares members of one species to other members
> of the SAME species.

Do you think survival of the fittest accelerates evolution or slows the evolutionary process? Do you even understand when rmns works most efficiently?

>
> But in fact, survival of the fittest members of a species tends
> to improve the fitness of the species as a whole, only the
> Procrustean Bed of MS doesn't allow biologists to use "fitness"
> in the latter sense.

You are wrong Peter, survival of the fittest only removes the weakest variants in a population. Study and understand the Lenski experiment and you can see why. Competition between variants slows evolution by rmns. The laws of physics require this.

>
>
> Now, could you get around to talking about what Muller wrote?

I am, I'm showing you his crucial blunder. But you don't recognize it because you haven't mastered introductory probability theory.

>
>
> Concluded in next reply, to be done soon after I have seen that
> this one has posted.
>

> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

> U. of South Carolina at Columbia
> http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 12:50:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 7:40:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 10:10:06 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
>

> > Improving fitness is a different physical phenomenon governed by different mathematical principles. You won't find the mathematics of imp\
> roved fitness in any population genetics texts at this time.
>
> What about published papers? Are you sure you've adequately surveyed
> them? Have you been over the ones referenced by Muller?

Who in the reptiles grow feathers crowd has correctly described how rmns works? If they have, they certainly haven't worked their way into the medical field. Muller certainly doesn't describe correctly how this phenomeon works. In fact he only mentions the mathematics of survival of the fittest. This mathematics is inadequate for describing how improvement in fitness works.

>
>
> > > > The creation of more fit variants requires rmns which are not dependent on gene frequencies but the absolute number of replications a variant can do.
> > > > .
> > >
> > > Surprise! Muller does NOT think rmns describe evolution. He
> > > especially disputes the r (random) part.
>
> > rmns is the phenomenon which improves fitness against selection conditions by genetic transformation.
>
> You really seem wedded to the "random" part. Muller talks a lot about
> why it is not useful to use the word in a simplistic way. For instance,
> the phenotype may have plenty to do through epigenetic evolution
> that prepares the ground for a genetic mutation which might otherwise be
> fatal, never mind whether it improves the fitness of the mutated
> individual.

So are you going to now claim that evolution is deterministic? Survival of the fittest is deterministic but improvement in fitness is a stochastic process.

>
>
> You really need to read Muller's paper in detail instead of cherry-picking
> and then making unsupportable insults like the following:
>
> > Before Muller tries to formulate a new model for evolution,
> > he should make an attempt to understand the empirical evidence of how genetic transforms work.
>
> or insults like the following:
>
>
> > > > So unless the field of biology is going to remove the last vestige of hard mathematical science from its curriculum, they will have to come to grips with the effect of the multiplication rule of probabilities and its effect on the production of more fit variants.
> > >
> > > The multiplication rule of probabilities is only as good
> > > as the data fed into it. Muller has oodles to say about all the
> > > branches of biology that he wants to incorporate into the
> > > EES, and which help us to see just what the data are really like.
>
> > You can extend evolutionary synthesis as far as you want but it will never go far enough to negate the multiplication rule for computing the joint probability of random independent events occurring.
>
> The rule isn't negated; the data profoundly affect the individual
> probabilities, and this is something you will never understand
> until you start to read Muller without prejudice.

I keep waiting for you to show us how Muller explains how rmns works. Instead you whine when I say he doesn't explain this and neither does any other biologist I know.

>
> > Muller can do oodles to try to obscure the mathematical facts of life but these facts won't disappear in the fog he produces.
>
> Heaping insults on insults like this is indicative of closed-minded
> prejudice.

Peter, you have no excuse. You are a professor of mathematics but you haven't mastered the mathematics of stochastic processes. Stop whining and hit the books and learn this subject.

>
>
> > >
> > > Never heard of the EES? You have a lot of interesting reading ahead
> > > of you, if you click on one of those links.
>
> > Why don't you tell us how EES makes reptiles grow feathers?
>
> EES doesn't make anything inevitable, least of all the growing
> of feathers by animals that resemble birds far more than they
> resemble any living reptiles.

Anything goes? That sounds like a scientific theory for the reptiles grows feathers crowd.

>
> Unlike you, I ask questions that are formulated fairly. For instance:
>
> Why don't you tell us whether God poofed birds and feathers into
> existence, or merely made the mutations that produced them have
> a probability of one?

I don't waste my time on stupid questions from a mathematics professor who hasn't mastered the mathemataics of stochastic processes. Once you understand introductory probability theory, then you will understand why your question is so silly.

>
>
> > Let's make it simpler for you. Tell us how EES explains how drug resistance occurs. It's simple mathematics.
>
>
> EES is not needed for the simple mathematics that has been worked
> out for this. But it may be needed to tell you how
> of bacteria and viruses evolved to where they are able to have
> the deleterious effects that make drug treatments necessary
> in the first place.

I see, EES explains the complex things of evolution like reptiles growing feathers but can't explain the simple things of evolution. So are you going to explain to us how reptiles grow feathers using EES? Or do you find that question too insulting?

>
>
> > > PS I did find one glaring shortcoming in Muller's paper, but it has nothing
> > > to do with anything you've ever tried to deal with.
> > >
> > > Curious? Just ask and I'll tell you what it is.
>
> > Everybody knows you didn't quite get the mathematics of probability theory
>
> Stop trolling. You have no evidence for this insult, none whatsoever.

Sure I have evidence for this. You think that increasing frequency of the Down's mutation with age makes that random event somehow become a dependent instead of random independent event. That is wrong. And a few years back I recall you claiming the at least one rule as a trick. It is not a trick, it is a property of stochastic processes.

>
>
> > so you wouldn't recognize if Muller had more than one glaring shortcoming.
>
> I don't think you can actually document a single one. You certainly have NOT
> documented a single one, whereas I can tell you exactly where to find the
> big weakness I have found. It is in the middle of Section 3.4.
>
> See if you can spot it.

Muller's one fundamental error is enough for me. If you find more, good for you. Of course you don't recognize the error Muller makes with his description of population genetics.

>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

> U. of South Carolina in Columbia
> http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

> > > > > > Peter Nyikos
> > > > >
> > > > > The link
> > > > >
> > > > > http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rfs.2017.0015
> > >
> > > ...was missing one letter. Correct is:
> > >
> > > http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015
> > >
> > >
> > > > > doesn't work, but the article can be read or downloaded here:
> > > > >
> > > > > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5566817/
> > > >

> > > > This author makes the same blunder that every biologist makes,
> > >

> > > Methinks you have not read more than 5% of the paper, Alan. Muller is
> > > ATTACKING the so-called "Modern Synthesis" (MS) and has lots
> > > to say about genetics that goes beyond what
> > > the MS has to say about it, later on in the paper.

> > It's a mishmash of arguments that try to counter the mathematical facts of life. Here's a summary of his argument:

> > "The limitations of the MS theory are not only highlighted by the criticisms directed against several of its traditional tenets but also by the failure to address some of the most important phenomena of organismal evolution. The question, for instance, of how complex phenotypic organizations arise in evolution is sidestepped by the population theoretical account, as is the reciprocal influence of these features of higher levels of organization on the evolutionary process. Indeed, the MS theory lacks a theory of organization that can account for the characteristic features of phenotypic evolution, such as novelty, modularity, homology, homoplasy or the origin of lineage-defining body plans. As will be shown below, evo-devo, niche construction, systems biology and other areas harbour the capacity to address at least certain aspects of these topics where the classical theory fails."

> > But perhaps you think that "novelty, modularity, homology, homoplasy or the origin of lineage-defining body plans" somehow cause the multiplication rule of probabilities disappear for joint independent events occurring. And that's the mathematical principle which governs the joint probability of two microevolutionary changes occurring on a lineage.

> > >
> > >
> > > > that is population genetics only consists of the mathematics of survival of the fittest. He says that here:
> > > > "The formalized core of the MS theory was -- and still is -- population genetics [35], a mathematical account of gene frequency dynamics in populations of organisms."
> > >
> > > Muller isn't stupid enough to say what you ascribe to him, nor
> > > even to endorse this "formalized core." See above.
> > >
> > > > Survival of the fittest does not create new alleles. This process removes alleles of the less fit variants.
> > >
> > > Do you really think Muller doesn't know this? You REALLY need to take
> > > a good long look at his paper, now that you have two links that work.
> > > They take you to slightly different places but you can find the full
> > > paper in both.

> > But the survival of the fittest does not improve fitness. Improving fitness is a different physical phenomenon governed by different mathematical principles. You won't find the mathematics of improved fitness in any population genetics texts at this time.
> > >
> > >
> > > > The creation of more fit variants requires rmns which are not dependent on gene frequencies but the absolute number of replications a variant can do.
> > > > .
> > >
> > > Surprise! Muller does NOT think rmns describe evolution. He
> > > especially disputes the r (random) part.
> > rmns is the phenomenon which improves fitness against selection conditions by genetic transformation. Before Muller tries to formulate a new model for evolution, he should make an attempt to understand the empirical evidence of how genetic transforms work.
> > >
> > >
> > > > So unless the field of biology is going to remove the last vestige of hard mathematical science from its curriculum, they will have to come to grips with the effect of the multiplication rule of probabilities and its effect on the production of more fit variants.
> > >
> > > The multiplication rule of probabilities is only as good
> > > as the data fed into it. Muller has oodles to say about all the
> > > branches of biology that he wants to incorporate into the
> > > EES, and which help us to see just what the data are really like.
> > You can extend evolutionary synthesis as far as you want but it will never go far enough to negate the multiplication rule for computing the joint probability of random independent events occurring. Muller can do oodles to try to obscure the mathematical facts of life but these facts won't disappear in the fog he produces.
> > >
> > >
> > > Never heard of the EES? You have a lot of interesting reading ahead
> > > of you, if you click on one of those links.
> > Why don't you tell us how EES makes reptiles grow feathers? Let's make it simpler for you. Tell us how EES explains how drug resistance occurs. It's simple mathematics.
> > >

> > > Peter Nyikos
> > > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > > University of South Carolina
> > > http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
> > >

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:35:03 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 12:20:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:

quoting from http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015

> "The theory performs well with regard to the issues it concentrates on, providing testable and abundantly confirmed predictions on the dynamics of genetic variation in evolving populations, on the gradual variation and adaptation of phenotypic traits, and on certain genetic features of speciation."

> So how does the theory explain why combination therapy works for the treatment of hiv.

How does YOUR theory explain it? You hardly ever talk about the DATA
that it assumes [1], namely that there are mutants already in the environment
BUT that the number of mutants resistant to 3 drugs of choice is small
enough that only a small number of unlucky patients, found in only a few
hospitals, have viruses immune to all 3. And if you can put 2 in place of 3,
so much the better.

[1] with good reason, but that comes from observations which your
20/20 hindsight tells you about, observations that come from mistakes
of the kind I describe next, and successful corrections that come
from using 3 (rather than, say, 10 drugs at a time).


The reason it is often a mistake to start with 1 is that the DATA
say that there is an unacceptable percentage of viruses that are likely
to be immune to just ONE. But if you dose too many patients with just
one, you are asking for trouble -- soon so many resistant to just one
are to be found that the probability of a mutation producing resistance
to others is greatly increased.

Without the DATA the multiplication rule of probabilities becomes
academic. But with the right data, the old Modern Synthesis can
explain its use about as well as you could.

> > > > > This author makes the same blunder that every biologist makes,
> >
> >
> > I may actually have gone easy on you when I wrote:

> Peter, I'm going easy on you. But let's push a little harder by pointing out that you have not mastered the mathematics of probability theory.

You've already pushed that hard in the preceding post, and so you
are just going over old insults.

> The reason I know this is that you think the at least one rule is a trick

I don't recall saying anything like that. Please quote my words,
or retract.

> and you can't recognize when events are independent.

Like Ray Martinez, you use unsupported insults to "support" earlier
unsupported insults.

Will you, like Ray, at some point claim that the back-and-forth has
become too complicated for anyone to follow, and run away?

> Remember your claim about the frequency of the Down's mutation?

I do remember mentioning the DATUM that it is more likely in older
women. In reply to my second reply, you also claimed that I said
this made it not random.

But I know that the word "random" has no meaning in probability
theory (as opposed to statistics) except that it talks about
"random variables" in a sense having nothing to do with our
everyday ideas of "random".

Let's see you define "random independent" in a way that makes
the following claim by you actually refute anything I said:

increasing frequency of the Down's mutation with age
[does not change the mutation from being]
a random independent event.

There is a correlation between age and frequency of the mutation,
that prevents the age of a "randomly picked" woman and the
probability that her next child will have Down's syndrome
from being independent events. If you deny this, your own words
above apply to you:

you can't recognize when events are independent.

as do the following:

> You need to pull out your probability theory text and review this subject
> if you want to carry on an intelligent conversation on stochastic processes.
> Otherwise, I'll think I'm discussing the topic with jillery.

Continued in next reply, to be done soon after I have seen that

this one has posted.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of South Carolina, Columbia SC
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:35:03 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 12:20:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 7:40:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> > > > Methinks you have not read more than 5% of the paper, Alan. Muller is
> > > > ATTACKING the so-called "Modern Synthesis" (MS) and has lots
> > > > to say about genetics that goes beyond what
> > > > the MS has to say about it, later on in the paper.
> >
> >
> > > It's a mishmash of arguments that try to counter the mathematical facts of life.
> >
> > What mathematical facts of life? The only one you care about where
> > the main purpose of talk.origins is concerned, is the "fact"
> > that God poofed whole animals into existence.

> Don't be silly. I'm trying to explain to you how rmns works.

... with the ultimate aim of establishing something about
creation that you are too coy to reveal here.

> And the joint probability of two independent events occurring is computed using the multiplication rule.

Do you REALLY think I haven't known this since my undergraduate
days, half a century ago?

> You need to learn how to compute the probability of each event.

That's DATA. Data that Muller wants people to be able to find by
taking all that evolutionary biologists have learned since the
MS got to be the reigning orthodoxy.

>I sent you the papers. Review introductory probability theory and when you have a basic understanding of the subject, you will understand my papers.

What makes you think I need to review anything? See above about the
last half century.

> >
> > Or do you believe, instead, that God just
> > kept guiding evolution along by making the probability
> > of certain mutations equal to 1 by making them happen, and then
> > also manipulating the environment so that the mutations would be
> > successful?

> I'm explaining to you how rmns works

Flagrant ducking of the question noted.

You also ducked it when I repeated it in my second reply, calling
it "silly". Stop pretending you aren't a ccreationist, and answer
either Yes or No or "I'm not taking sides on that question,"
or come up with some surrealistic reply to make me think I
am conversing with jillery.


Remainder deleted, to be replied to once you stop being coy
about your agenda here.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[John Harshman]

On 1/22/18 3:21 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:35:03 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
>> On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 12:20:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
>
> quoting from http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015
>
>> "The theory performs well with regard to the issues it concentrates on, providing testable and abundantly confirmed predictions on the dynamics of genetic variation in evolving populations, on the gradual variation and adaptation of phenotypic traits, and on certain genetic features of speciation."
>
>> So how does the theory explain why combination therapy works for the treatment of hiv.
>
> How does YOUR theory explain it?

Let me know if he ever says anything new. I don't read him any more.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 3:25:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:35:03 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 12:20:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
>
> quoting from http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015
>
> > "The theory performs well with regard to the issues it concentrates on, providing testable and abundantly confirmed predictions on the dynamics of genetic variation in evolving populations, on the gradual variation and adaptation of phenotypic traits, and on certain genetic features of speciation."
>
> > So how does the theory explain why combination therapy works for the treatment of hiv.
>

> How does YOUR theory explain it? You hardly ever talk about the DATA
> that it assumes [1], namely that there are mutants already in the environment
> BUT that the number of mutants resistant to 3 drugs of choice is small
> enough that only a small number of unlucky patients, found in only a few
> hospitals, have viruses immune to all 3. And if you can put 2 in place of 3,
> so much the better.

If you read my papers you would understand exactly why 3 drug therapy works. rmns works by a cycle of beneficial mutation(s) followed by amplification of the mutation to improve the probability of the next beneficial mutation(s) occurring. If only a single selection pressure is acting on the population, it only requires a single beneficial mutation to improve fitness. If multiple selection pressures are acting on the population simultaneously, it requires multiple simultaneous beneficial mutations to improve fitness.

>
> [1] with good reason, but that comes from observations which your
> 20/20 hindsight tells you about, observations that come from mistakes
> of the kind I describe next, and successful corrections that come
> from using 3 (rather than, say, 10 drugs at a time).

The probabilities for 3 simultaneous beneficial mutations are low enough that three drug therapy for hiv is sufficient. Each selection pressure imposes another instance of the multiplication rule on the probabilities of those beneficial mutations occurring.

>
>
> The reason it is often a mistake to start with 1 is that the DATA
> say that there is an unacceptable percentage of viruses that are likely
> to be immune to just ONE. But if you dose too many patients with just
> one, you are asking for trouble -- soon so many resistant to just one
> are to be found that the probability of a mutation producing resistance
> to others is greatly increased.

That's only part of the story. Of course, the use of multiple simultaneous selection pressures reduces the probabilities of some member having beneficial mutations to each of the selection pressures. But if the populations are large enough, the probability is higher for that to occur. And if that variant does exist and achieve that population size again, another set of beneficial mutations can occur giving even more resistance to those selection pressures. Understanding how high those probabilities are as a function of population size is very important. For example, if an oncologist is treating a cancer with e12 tumor cells, there will be a reasonable probability of a double resistant variant to two drug targeted therapy. What might initially appear to be a successful treatment will ultimately fail as that double resistant variant grows.

>
> Without the DATA the multiplication rule of probabilities becomes
> academic. But with the right data, the old Modern Synthesis can
> explain its use about as well as you could.

It's not hard to collect the data. Kishony could easily estimate his population sizes and Lenski knows the population sizes for his experiment. Estimating the size of a tumor can be done radiologically and with biopsies. Traditional population genetics only concerns itself with survival of the fittest. That's the mathematics of Haldane and Kimura. Haldane and Kimura's math is not even applicable to the Kishony experiment because there is no competition between variants. Kishony's experiment is governed only by the mathematics of improving fitness. That's the math that I've presented. The Kishony experiment is more analogous to what happens with drug resistance in the clinical medical environment, especially with the immune compromised patient.

>
>
> > > > > > This author makes the same blunder that every biologist makes,
> > >
> > >
> > > I may actually have gone easy on you when I wrote:
>
> > Peter, I'm going easy on you. But let's push a little harder by pointing out that you have not mastered the mathematics of probability theory.
>
> You've already pushed that hard in the preceding post, and so you
> are just going over old insults.

Do you think you are insulting your students when you tell them to learn how to do a vector calculus problem? Basic probability theory is not that difficult especially when you apply it to rmns. The rmns process is governed by nested binomial probability equations. This is not much different than a coin tossing problem except with highly asymmetric possible outcomes.

>
>
> > The reason I know this is that you think the at least one rule is a trick
>
> I don't recall saying anything like that. Please quote my words,
> or retract.

You said this several years ago when we first started talking about this problem in one of your posts. If you can't remember saying that, sorry. I remember you saying that because I'm interested in knowing who understands probability theory and who does not. That was the first clue that you had trouble understanding probability theory. That was not the only clue that you gave which indicated you have difficulty with this area of mathematics. Your claims about the Down's mutation confirmed my first impression.

>
> > and you can't recognize when events are independent.
>
> Like Ray Martinez, you use unsupported insults to "support" earlier
> unsupported insults.

So you deny what you said about the incidence of the Down's mutation? You made the mistake of thinking that if the frequency of an event changing somehow made it not random independent. Do you recall I gave you the example of a die which instead of having 1,2,3,4,5,6 on each face had 1,1,2,3,4,5 improves the probability of having a 1 appear but each of the outcomes from the roll of either die are still random independent events.

>
> Will you, like Ray, at some point claim that the back-and-forth has
> become too complicated for anyone to follow, and run away?

Hell no. Anyone who can figure out vector calculus should be able to figure out probability theory. Where the light came on for me on this subject occurred when I understood that a probability is nothing more than a relative frequency of outcomes if you perform the random experiment many times. So for a coin tossing experiment, 1000 tosses will give you about 500 heads and 500 tails. And then I started writing out the sample spaces for dice rolling and the at least one rule and the multiplication rule started to make sense. rmns is not much more complicated than these simple problems.

>
>
> > Remember your claim about the frequency of the Down's mutation?
>
> I do remember mentioning the DATUM that it is more likely in older
> women. In reply to my second reply, you also claimed that I said
> this made it not random.

The way I remember the discussion, you were trying to claim that because of the frequency changes that it was no longer random and independent.

>
> But I know that the word "random" has no meaning in probability
> theory (as opposed to statistics) except that it talks about
> "random variables" in a sense having nothing to do with our
> everyday ideas of "random".

Whoever taught you probability theory did a terrible job. What differentiates a random experiment from a deterministic experiment is that you cannot predict the outcome of a random experiment. The simplest random experiment is a coin toss. Perhaps you think you can predict the outcome from a coin toss but about half the time you will be wrong. And the more times you toss the coin, the closer to one half your accuracy in prediction.

>
> Let's see you define "random independent" in a way that makes
> the following claim by you actually refute anything I said:
>
> increasing frequency of the Down's mutation with age
> [does not change the mutation from being]
> a random independent event.
>
> There is a correlation between age and frequency of the mutation,
> that prevents the age of a "randomly picked" woman and the
> probability that her next child will have Down's syndrome
> from being independent events. If you deny this, your own words
> above apply to you:
>
> you can't recognize when events are independent.

What makes the Down's mutation random and independent is that you cannot predict which conception will have that mutation. The only thing you can say correctly about this mutation is that it increases in frequency with age. It's just like the card counter in blackjack. If he knows that the deck is rich in high cards, he knows the probability of the dealer going bust is increased. But the play of the cards is still random. And it's the same for rmns. You can't predict which member will get that beneficial mutation and the probability of that mutation occurring with a single replication is simply the mutation rate, but if you have many members of a particular variant, the probability is improved that at least one of those members will get that particular mutation.

>
> as do the following:
>
> > You need to pull out your probability theory text and review this subject
> > if you want to carry on an intelligent conversation on stochastic processes.
> > Otherwise, I'll think I'm discussing the topic with jillery.
>
> Continued in next reply, to be done soon after I have seen that
> this one has posted.
>

> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 3:35:02 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:35:03 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 12:20:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:

> > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 7:40:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> > > > > Methinks you have not read more than 5% of the paper, Alan. Muller is
> > > > > ATTACKING the so-called "Modern Synthesis" (MS) and has lots
> > > > > to say about genetics that goes beyond what
> > > > > the MS has to say about it, later on in the paper.
> > >
> > >
> > > > It's a mishmash of arguments that try to counter the mathematical facts of life.
> > >
> > > What mathematical facts of life? The only one you care about where
> > > the main purpose of talk.origins is concerned, is the "fact"
> > > that God poofed whole animals into existence.
>
> > Don't be silly. I'm trying to explain to you how rmns works.
>
> ... with the ultimate aim of establishing something about
> creation that you are too coy to reveal here.

I'm not here to prove creation. I'm here to explain how rmns. My objection to evolutionism is teaching children the mythology of the primordial soup and that reptiles grow feathers. I have no objection to public schools teaching children correctly how evolution works. We need young minds prepared to deal with drug treatments and understanding why they fail.

>
> > And the joint probability of two independent events occurring is computed using the multiplication rule.
>
> Do you REALLY think I haven't known this since my undergraduate
> days, half a century ago?

If you do know, you are really good at hiding your understanding. This is why I brought up the claim that a series of microevolutionary events add up to a macroevolutionary change. Microevolutionary do not add, the are random independent events that are linked by the multiplication rule.

>
>
> > You need to learn how to compute the probability of each event.
>
> That's DATA. Data that Muller wants people to be able to find by
> taking all that evolutionary biologists have learned since the
> MS got to be the reigning orthodoxy.

So show us how Muller does the computation.

>
>
> >I sent you the papers. Review introductory probability theory and when you have a basic understanding of the subject, you will understand my papers.
>
> What makes you think I need to review anything? See above about the
> last half century.

What makes me think you need to review probability theory are that your posts make about as much sense as jillery's.

>
>
> > >
> > > Or do you believe, instead, that God just
> > > kept guiding evolution along by making the probability
> > > of certain mutations equal to 1 by making them happen, and then
> > > also manipulating the environment so that the mutations would be
> > > successful?
>
> > I'm explaining to you how rmns works
>
> Flagrant ducking of the question noted.

So if you don't want me to duck your questions, try staying on topic. We are talking about evolution, aren't we?

>
> You also ducked it when I repeated it in my second reply, calling
> it "silly". Stop pretending you aren't a ccreationist, and answer
> either Yes or No or "I'm not taking sides on that question,"
> or come up with some surrealistic reply to make me think I
> am conversing with jillery.

It appears that jillery knows as much about probability theory as you do. You better hope you are not assigned to teach that course,

>
>
> Remainder deleted, to be replied to once you stop being coy
> about your agenda here.

So you are the one to run when the discussion gets too complicated. antio sas

>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 3:35:02 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:35:03 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 12:20:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 7:40:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> > > > > Methinks you have not read more than 5% of the paper, Alan. Muller is
> > > > > ATTACKING the so-called "Modern Synthesis" (MS) and has lots
> > > > > to say about genetics that goes beyond what
> > > > > the MS has to say about it, later on in the paper.
> > >
> > >
> > > > It's a mishmash of arguments that try to counter the mathematical facts of life.
> > >
> > > What mathematical facts of life? The only one you care about where
> > > the main purpose of talk.origins is concerned, is the "fact"
> > > that God poofed whole animals into existence.
>
> > Don't be silly. I'm trying to explain to you how rmns works.
>
> ... with the ultimate aim of establishing something about
> creation that you are too coy to reveal here.

I'm establishing that the theory of evolution is a mathematically irrational belief system while at the same time describing how drug resistance occurs and why combination therapy works for treating hiv, something which you can't do with conventional evolutionism or EES.

>
> > And the joint probability of two independent events occurring is computed using the multiplication rule.
>
> Do you REALLY think I haven't known this since my undergraduate
> days, half a century ago?

I don't think you know how to do this math.

>
>
> > You need to learn how to compute the probability of each event.
>
> That's DATA. Data that Muller wants people to be able to find by
> taking all that evolutionary biologists have learned since the
> MS got to be the reigning orthodoxy.

Do you know the difference between data and mathematics?

>
>
> >I sent you the papers. Review introductory probability theory and when you have a basic understanding of the subject, you will understand my papers.
>
> What makes you think I need to review anything? See above about the
> last half century.

Whatever, don't review probability theory. Then you and jillery will have the same level of understanding of rmns.

>
>
> > >
> > > Or do you believe, instead, that God just
> > > kept guiding evolution along by making the probability
> > > of certain mutations equal to 1 by making them happen, and then
> > > also manipulating the environment so that the mutations would be
> > > successful?
>
> > I'm explaining to you how rmns works
>
> Flagrant ducking of the question noted.

Sorry, I'm just not interested in having a discussion about religion. I'm also not interested in the primordial soup.

>
> You also ducked it when I repeated it in my second reply, calling
> it "silly". Stop pretending you aren't a ccreationist, and answer
> either Yes or No or "I'm not taking sides on that question,"
> or come up with some surrealistic reply to make me think I
> am conversing with jillery.
>
>

> Remainder deleted, to be replied to once you stop being coy
> about your agenda here.

Peter, I've just submitted my 5th paper for publication on this topic. It addresses rmns in the competitive and non-competitive environments. Do you know of any papers on this subject? Do you even know what the difference is?

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

You don't even understand the old stuff. But perhaps you want to explain the difference between rmns in competitive and non-competitive environments? They should have taught you that in your introduction to reptiles grows feathers class.

[jillery]

According to you, nobody but you understands the old stuff. Or the
new stuff. Or any stuff. Not sure how the world manages without you
stuffing yourself with your non sequitur spam.

[jillery]

On Mon, 22 Jan 2018 17:17:39 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net> wrote:

>What makes me think you need to review probability theory are that your posts make about as much sense as jillery's.

Actually, my posts make a lot more sense that your non sequitur spam.
Just sayin'.

[jillery]

On Mon, 22 Jan 2018 15:33:43 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>You also ducked it when I repeated it in my second reply, calling
>it "silly". Stop pretending you aren't a ccreationist, and answer
>either Yes or No or "I'm not taking sides on that question,"
>or come up with some surrealistic reply to make me think I
>am conversing with jillery.

Actually, it looks like you're posting to yourself. Just sayin'.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 8:20:03 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Jan 2018 18:37:52 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> wrote:
>
> >On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 5:00:03 PM UTC-8, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 1/22/18 3:21 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:35:03 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> >> >> On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 12:20:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> >>> On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> >> >
> >> > quoting from http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015
> >> >
> >> >> "The theory performs well with regard to the issues it concentrates on, providing testable and abundantly confirmed predictions on the dynamics of genetic variation in evolving populations, on the gradual variation and adaptation of phenotypic traits, and on certain genetic features of speciation."
> >> >
> >> >> So how does the theory explain why combination therapy works for the treatment of hiv.
> >> >
> >> > How does YOUR theory explain it?
> >>
> >> Let me know if he ever says anything new. I don't read him any more.
> >
> >You don't even understand the old stuff. But perhaps you want to explain the difference between rmns in competitive and non-competitive environments? They should have taught you that in your introduction to reptiles grows feathers class.
>
>
> According to you, nobody but you understands the old stuff. Or the
> new stuff. Or any stuff. Not sure how the world manages without you
> stuffing yourself with your non sequitur spam.

Bill Rogers kind of understands the old stuff now. His problem was that he was using the mathematics of survival of the fittest to try to explain improving fitness. That is physically incorrect. Perhaps now he will be able to write a paper on a durable treatment for malaria instead of papers on emergence of resistance.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 8:20:03 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:

> On Mon, 22 Jan 2018 17:17:39 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> wrote:
>
> >What makes me think you need to review probability theory are that your posts make about as much sense as jillery's.
>
>
> Actually, my posts make a lot more sense that your non sequitur spam.
> Just sayin'.

Reptiles growing feathers makes sense? You still haven't explained why you aren't growing feathers, you have the keratin gene, it's cold out there, you have mutations, what else do you need?

[jillery]

Bill Rogers understands that your model for malaria doesn't apply to
evolution.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 6:20:05 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 05:52:06 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

I guess Bill has lost his voice and needs Barbie to explain his views. And of course, Bill's understanding of evolution has only allowed him to write papers on the emergence of drug-resistance, not how to prevent it.

[jillery]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 05:56:56 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net> wrote:

>On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 8:20:03 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> On Mon, 22 Jan 2018 17:17:39 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> wrote:
>>
>> >What makes me think you need to review probability theory are that your posts make about as much sense as jillery's.
>>
>>
>> Actually, my posts make a lot more sense that your non sequitur spam.
>> Just sayin'.
>Reptiles growing feathers makes sense?

What do you think is nonsensical about it?

> You still haven't explained why you aren't growing feathers,

You still haven't explained why you aren't growing a working brain.

>you have the keratin gene, it's cold out there, you have mutations, what else do you need?

You allude to a Creationist PRATT, that specific mutations should
happen as needed. As has been pointed out to you many times by many
posters, mutations are random with respect to the environment. Your
failure to understand that simple fact shows you have no idea what
you're talking about.

[jillery]

Apparently Bill Rogers has better things to do than address your non
sequitur spam. Too bad for you I don't have that problem.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

Sure Bill has better things to do, like writing papers on the emergence of drug resistance. His understanding of rmns ensures he will write many more papers on this topic. Perhaps you want to teach him how rmns works so he can develop a durable treatment for malaria.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:20:03 PM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Jan 2018 15:33:43 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

...in reply to the Kleinman post for which the attribution line,
properly restored, would read:

> > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:35:03 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:

> >You also ducked it when I repeated it in my second reply, calling
> >it "silly". Stop pretending you aren't a ccreationist, and answer
> >either Yes or No or "I'm not taking sides on that question,"
> >or come up with some surrealistic reply to make me think I
> >am conversing with jillery.
>
>
> Actually, it looks like you're posting to yourself. Just sayin'.

Perhaps you would like to explain this surrealistic remark.

Was it inspired by my closing clause?

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 09:16:52 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net> wrote:

>On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 8:50:03 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 07:12:11 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> wrote:
>>
>> >> >Bill Rogers kind of understands the old stuff now. His problem was that he was using the mathematics of survival of the fittest to try to explain improving fitness. That is physically incorrect. Perhaps now he will be able to write a paper on a durable treatment for malaria instead of papers on emergence of resistance.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Bill Rogers understands that your model for malaria doesn't apply to
>> >> evolution.
>> >I guess Bill has lost his voice and needs Barbie to explain his views. And of course, Bill's understanding of evolution has only allowed him to write papers on the emergence of drug-resistance, not how to prevent it.
>>
>>
>> Apparently Bill Rogers has better things to do than address your non
>> sequitur spam. Too bad for you I don't have that problem.
>Sure Bill has better things to do, like writing papers on the emergence of drug resistance. His understanding of rmns ensures he will write many more papers on this topic. Perhaps you want to teach him how rmns works so he can develop a durable treatment for malaria.

More of your non sequitur spam. You just can't help yourself.

[jillery]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 09:35:01 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> continued to ejaculate his repetitive
irrelevant spew from his puckered sphincter:

Is anybody surprised.

Your surrealistic remarks disqualify you from complaining about my
alleged surrealistic remarks. Tu quoque back atcha, asshole.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 10:00:05 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 09:16:52 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> wrote:
>
> >On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 8:50:03 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> >> On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 07:12:11 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >> >Bill Rogers kind of understands the old stuff now. His problem was that he was using the mathematics of survival of the fittest to try to explain improving fitness. That is physically incorrect. Perhaps now he will be able to write a paper on a durable treatment for malaria instead of papers on emergence of resistance.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> Bill Rogers understands that your model for malaria doesn't apply to
> >> >> evolution.
> >> >I guess Bill has lost his voice and needs Barbie to explain his views. And of course, Bill's understanding of evolution has only allowed him to write papers on the emergence of drug-resistance, not how to prevent it.
> >>
> >>
> >> Apparently Bill Rogers has better things to do than address your non
> >> sequitur spam. Too bad for you I don't have that problem.
> >Sure Bill has better things to do, like writing papers on the emergence of drug resistance. His understanding of rmns ensures he will write many more papers on this topic. Perhaps you want to teach him how rmns works so he can develop a durable treatment for malaria.
>
>
> More of your non sequitur spam. You just can't help yourself.

But I can help Bill understand how drug resistance occurs. And I don't use the theory of DumbAndDumberDesign to do this.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:55:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 12:50:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 7:40:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 10:10:06 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> >
> > > Improving fitness is a different physical phenomenon governed by different mathematical principles.

> > > You won't find the mathematics of improved fitness in any population genetics texts at this time.
> >

> > What about published papers? Are you sure you've adequately surveyed
> > them? Have you been over the ones referenced by Muller?

> Who in the reptiles grow feathers crowd has correctly described how rmns works?

There is no such crowd. When I asked you to specify WHICH reptiles
you accuse them of claiming to grow feathers, you ducked the question
by transparently joking "turtles" and then corrected to "maybe lizards,"
both of which are transparently false.

So, the answer to your question is, "None, as befits membership
in the empty set."

> If they have, they certainly haven't worked their way into the medical field. Muller certainly doesn't describe correctly how this phenomeon works.

Show me where he attempted to describe it, or admit that you are talking
about the empty set of attempts by him.

You are like the person who says "This would have been a good place
to..." where one could only avoid this taunt by posting a 1000+ line
post in which every relevant comment is completely supported in a
way that anticipates ALL possible rejoinders.

> In fact he only mentions the mathematics of survival of the fittest.

Show me where he mentions this, or retract.

> This mathematics is inadequate for describing how improvement in fitness works.

Show me where he attempts to describe this, or retract.

> >
> > > > > The creation of more fit variants requires rmns which are not dependent on gene frequencies but the absolute number of replications a variant can do.
> > > > > .
> > > >
> > > > Surprise! Muller does NOT think rmns describe evolution. He
> > > > especially disputes the r (random) part.
> >
> > > rmns is the phenomenon which improves fitness against selection conditions by genetic transformation.
> >
> > You really seem wedded to the "random" part. Muller talks a lot about
> > why it is not useful to use the word in a simplistic way. For instance,
> > the phenotype may have plenty to do through epigenetic evolution
> > that prepares the ground for a genetic mutation which might otherwise be
> > fatal, never mind whether it improves the fitness of the mutated
> > individual.

> So are you going to now claim that evolution is deterministic?

No.
Why do you ask?

> Survival of the fittest is deterministic but improvement in fitness is a stochastic process.

Governed in each individual by quantum indeterminacy, eh?

How come quantum indeterminacy does not enter into survival of the
fittest in The World According to Adam Kleinman?

> >
> >
> > You really need to read Muller's paper in detail instead of cherry-picking
> > and then making unsupportable insults like the following:
> >
> > > Before Muller tries to formulate a new model for evolution,
> > > he should make an attempt to understand the empirical evidence of how genetic transforms work.
> >
> > or insults like the following:
> >
> >
> > > > > So unless the field of biology is going to remove the last vestige of hard mathematical science from its curriculum, they will have to come to grips with the effect of the multiplication rule of probabilities and its effect on the production of more fit variants.
> > > >
> > > > The multiplication rule of probabilities is only as good
> > > > as the data fed into it. Muller has oodles to say about all the
> > > > branches of biology that he wants to incorporate into the
> > > > EES, and which help us to see just what the data are really like.
> >
> > > You can extend evolutionary synthesis as far as you want but it will never go far enough to negate the multiplication rule for computing the joint probability of random independent events occurring.
> >
> > The rule isn't negated; the data profoundly affect the individual
> > probabilities, and this is something you will never understand
> > until you start to read Muller without prejudice.

> I keep waiting for you to show us how Muller explains how rmns works.

Why? You accused Muller of being ignorant of it, so it is up
to YOU to show where he botched the alleged explanation.

> Instead you whine when I say he doesn't explain this and neither does any other biologist I know.

See above about the 1000+ line analogy. It would seem that you think
Muller should have written a textbook on the Modern Synthesis, or stand
condemned for not monopolizing over half of the special issue of the
special issue of "Interface Focus 7: 20170015" by writing a complete
[and YOU arrogate to yourself the right to judge HOW complete]
description of how the Modern Synthesis works.

His article can be found in:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015

and if you scroll to the bottom, you will see arrowheads marked
Previous and Next
which let you navigate all through the issue.

The "Previous" takes you right away to a five-author introduction
to the whole issue, complete with a table of contents that is
navigable to all the rest of the contributions.


So you might as well go the whole hog and accuse every contributor
of not knowing how rmns work because they did not give detailed
criticisms/descriptions of how they are supposed to work
in the Modern Synthesis.

And then you can repeat your flame about how I whine about
___________ [continue as above} instead of proceeding at your
beck and call.

> > > Muller can do oodles to try to obscure the mathematical facts of life but these facts won't disappear in the fog he produces.
> >
> > Heaping insults on insults like this is indicative of closed-minded
> > prejudice.


> Peter, you have no excuse.

For not doing everything you want me to do at your beck and call?

Who died and made you the moderator of talk.origins?

> You are a professor of mathematics but you haven't mastered the mathematics of stochastic processes.

More of that dishonest "This would be a good place to have written..."
arrogance.

> Stop whining and hit the books and learn this subject.

Fallacy of begging the question.

> > > > Never heard of the EES? You have a lot of interesting reading ahead
> > > > of you, if you click on one of those links.
> >
> > > Why don't you tell us how EES makes reptiles grow feathers?
> >
> > EES doesn't make anything inevitable, least of all the growing
> > of feathers by animals that resemble birds far more than they
> > resemble any living reptiles.


> Anything goes?

Non sequitur noted.

> That sounds like a scientific theory for the reptiles grows feathers crowd.

There you go again, talking about the empty set.

> > Unlike you, I ask questions that are formulated fairly. For instance:
> >
> > Why don't you tell us whether God poofed birds and feathers into
> > existence, or merely made the mutations that produced them have
> > a probability of one?

> I don't waste my time on stupid questions

Let me guess: it is stupid because you go by a definition of
"creationism" which does NOT call the Behe-style "merely
made the mutations" hypothesis "creationism" but
REQUIRES that God poof birds, complete with feathers, into
existence *ex nihilo*,

Actually, that's my concept of creationism too, but I wasn't
sure it was yours. And since you admit to being a creationist,
you are only digging yourself in deeper by continuing to duck
the question.

> Once you understand introductory probability theory, then you will understand why your question is so silly.

Complete bullshit. NO ONE could possibly divine which kind of
creationist you are by reading all the books on probability
theory that have ever been published.

<more bullshit by you snipped here, but dealt with if you insist>

> > > > PS I did find one glaring shortcoming in Muller's paper, but it has nothing
> > > > to do with anything you've ever tried to deal with.
> > > >
> > > > Curious? Just ask and I'll tell you what it is.
> >
> > > Everybody knows you didn't quite get the mathematics of probability theory
> >
> > Stop trolling. You have no evidence for this insult, none whatsoever.

<snip claims dealt with in a reply yesterday to a different post of yours>

> > > so you wouldn't recognize if Muller had more than one glaring shortcoming.
> >
> > I don't think you can actually document a single one. You certainly have NOT
> > documented a single one, whereas I can tell you exactly where to find the
> > big weakness I have found. It is in the middle of Section 3.4.
> >
> > See if you can spot it.

I don't think you know enough about evolution or paleontology
[either would do] to spot it, and I don't expect you ever to
try to prove I am wrong about this.

> Muller's one fundamental error is enough for me.

Of not monopolizing more than half that special issue? Everything
you have written so far suggests that this is the ONLY "fundamental
error" -- in fact the ONLY "error" -- you have been able to find.

> If you find more, good for you. Of course you don't recognize the error Muller makes with his description of population genetics.

And you have not been able to show that he made any such error.
Your taunts after the passages you quoted from him were
Ron Okimoto style non-sequiturs.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, January 20, 2018 at 1:35:03 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Jan 2018 13:34:42 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >By the way, here is the closing paragraph of Carlip's post, picking
> >up where the quotation from him up there leaves off:
> >
> >> > Your "Unmoved Mover" proposal, as far as I can tell, doesn't do that.
> >> > Perhaps I'm wrong, though. Can you give an example of *anything* that
> >> > we might observe in the future that would be incompatible with your
> >> > proposal, that would demonstrate that it was wrong?
> >>
> >> > Steve Carlip
> >
> >Similarly, can anyone give an example of *anything* that might
> >evolve in the future that is physically possible but is incompatible
> >with extrapolation from the present using ONLY the Modern Synthesis?
>
>
> You presume a false equivalence.

Wrong. There are differences, to be sure, but I said "similarly"
and I certainly don't claim they are completely similar, whatever
that might mean.


> An Unmoved Mover would be a
> supernatural Agent, by definition,

AFAIK Aristotle originated the concept, and IIRC he did NOT
claim any supernatural powers for the Unmoved Mover.
See my post to Pagano yesterday for more about this.

> capable of creating physically
> impossible things, by definition.

Capability is not the issue. When the subject of predictions
is involved, one predicts of a hypothesized volitional entity what
[s]he thinks that entity WOULD do, not what it is CAPABLE of doing.

A deist, for instance, might predict that the Unmoved Mover,
having made the universe, would do NOTHING to it in the future,
despite having a huge capacity for doing all kinds of things.

Christians who identify the Christian God with the unmoved
mover, nevertheless would recognize ways in which the Bible
(especially the NT) describes constraints this Trinity
puts on Themselves, and frame their predictions accordingly.


> Predictions using the Modern
> Synthesis would be limited to reality, a substantially smaller set of
> possibilities.

For "using" read "consistent with."

For "reality" read "things consistent with the science of physics"

And the point is, both camps are to work within the limits they have
set for themselves, but do not impose any other limits. That, at least,
is the way I have interpreted Steven Carlip's challenges to Joe.


And Joe has been absent from talk.origins since Christmas, so I
don't know whether Joe identifies the Unmoved Mover as the Christian God,
or some deistic version of God, or....

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia, SC
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 10:40:03 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:55:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 12:50:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 7:40:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 10:10:06 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > >
> > > > Improving fitness is a different physical phenomenon governed by different mathematical principles.
> > > > You won't find the mathematics of improved fitness in any population genetics texts at this time.
> > >
> > > What about published papers? Are you sure you've adequately surveyed
> > > them? Have you been over the ones referenced by Muller?
>
> > Who in the reptiles grow feathers crowd has correctly described how rmns works?
>
> There is no such crowd. When I asked you to specify WHICH reptiles
> you accuse them of claiming to grow feathers, you ducked the question
> by transparently joking "turtles" and then corrected to "maybe lizards,"
> both of which are transparently false.

Sure, there is a crowd that believes reptiles grow feathers. These are the advocates of the theory of DumbAndDumberDesign. I do not believe that reptiles grow feathers. They sometimes talk about an ArchieDumbtrex fossil, but you will have to ask them which reptiles they think grow feathers.

>
> So, the answer to your question is, "None, as befits membership
> in the empty set."

Correct. There are no papers produced by the reptiles grow feathers crowd which correctly describe how rmns works. This explains why we have multi-drug resistant infection, multi-herbicide resistant weeds, multi-pesticide resistant insects and less than durable cancer treatments.

>
>
> > If they have, they certainly haven't worked their way into the medical field. Muller certainly doesn't describe correctly how this phenomeon works.
>
> Show me where he attempted to describe it, or admit that you are talking
> about the empty set of attempts by him.

He doesn't. The only reference he makes to population genetics is to link this subject to survival of the fittest. But that mathematics is not adequate to describe the improvement in fitness. You have to read my papers to find the correct mathematics for this component of population genetics.

>
> You are like the person who says "This would have been a good place
> to..." where one could only avoid this taunt by posting a 1000+ line
> post in which every relevant comment is completely supported in a
> way that anticipates ALL possible rejoinders.

This would be a good place to do the mathematics, it only takes 14 lines to describe the relevant mathematics of rmns.

>
>
> > In fact he only mentions the mathematics of survival of the fittest.
>
> Show me where he mentions this, or retract.

Here's his quote:
"Even though it never constituted an encompassing formal synthesis [34], this movement had brought together the basic neo-Darwinian principles of variation, inheritance, differential reproduction and natural selection with Mendelian, experimental and population genetics, as well as with concepts and data addressing the patterns of evolution stemming from the fields of palaeontology, botany and systematics. The formalized core of the MS theory was—and still is—population genetics [35], a mathematical account of gene frequency dynamics in populations of organisms."
Differential reproduction and natural selection and a mathematical account of gene frequency dynamics in populations of organisms is nothing more than a wordy description of survival of the fittest. That, in fact, is the mathematics of Haldane and Kimura. But it is not the mathematics of improving fitness.

>
>
> > This mathematics is inadequate for describing how improvement in fitness works.
>
> Show me where he attempts to describe this, or retract.

Survival of the fittest is not an improvement in fitness. Survival of the fittest only removes the less fit variants from a population. If you want improvement in fitness, you need rmns and that process works entirely different from survival of the fittest. If you want to see experimental examples of each, study the Lenski experiment which superimposes survival of the fittest with rmns and the Kishony experiment which has only rmns working without competition between variants. Muller does not desribe rmns, only survival of the fittest.

>
> > >
> > > > > > The creation of more fit variants requires rmns which are not dependent on gene frequencies but the absolute number of replications a variant can do.
> > > > > > .
> > > > >
> > > > > Surprise! Muller does NOT think rmns describe evolution. He
> > > > > especially disputes the r (random) part.
> > >
> > > > rmns is the phenomenon which improves fitness against selection conditions by genetic transformation.
> > >
> > > You really seem wedded to the "random" part. Muller talks a lot about
> > > why it is not useful to use the word in a simplistic way. For instance,
> > > the phenotype may have plenty to do through epigenetic evolution
> > > that prepares the ground for a genetic mutation which might otherwise be
> > > fatal, never mind whether it improves the fitness of the mutated
> > > individual.
>
> > So are you going to now claim that evolution is deterministic?
>
> No.
> Why do you ask?

If evolution is stochastic, you had better brush-up on your probability theory if you want to do this mathematics.

>
> > Survival of the fittest is deterministic but improvement in fitness is a stochastic process.
>
> Governed in each individual by quantum indeterminacy, eh?

It is possible to determine the frequencies of outcomes for rmns. Another thing you need to understand about stochastic processes is that they do exhibit statistical regularity. The key to doing these types of problems is identifying the random trial and the possible outcomes from that trial. That gives you the pieces of the mathematical puzzle to determine that statistical regularity.

>
> How come quantum indeterminacy does not enter into survival of the
> fittest in The World According to Adam Kleinman?

Survival of the fittest is not a stochastic process but a conservative process. The most efficient user of the resources of the environment will have the most resources available to reproduce. Lenski's experiment demonstrates this principle very nicely.

>
> > >
> > >
> > > You really need to read Muller's paper in detail instead of cherry-picking
> > > and then making unsupportable insults like the following:
> > >
> > > > Before Muller tries to formulate a new model for evolution,
> > > > he should make an attempt to understand the empirical evidence of how genetic transforms work.
> > >
> > > or insults like the following:
> > >
> > >
> > > > > > So unless the field of biology is going to remove the last vestige of hard mathematical science from its curriculum, they will have to come to grips with the effect of the multiplication rule of probabilities and its effect on the production of more fit variants.
> > > > >
> > > > > The multiplication rule of probabilities is only as good
> > > > > as the data fed into it. Muller has oodles to say about all the
> > > > > branches of biology that he wants to incorporate into the
> > > > > EES, and which help us to see just what the data are really like.
> > >
> > > > You can extend evolutionary synthesis as far as you want but it will never go far enough to negate the multiplication rule for computing the joint probability of random independent events occurring.
> > >
> > > The rule isn't negated; the data profoundly affect the individual
> > > probabilities, and this is something you will never understand
> > > until you start to read Muller without prejudice.
>
> > I keep waiting for you to show us how Muller explains how rmns works.
>
> Why? You accused Muller of being ignorant of it, so it is up
> to YOU to show where he botched the alleged explanation.

Muller makes no explanation on the subject of rmns. And Muller is not the only one ignorant on this subject.

>
>
> > Instead you whine when I say he doesn't explain this and neither does any other biologist I know.
>
> See above about the 1000+ line analogy. It would seem that you think
> Muller should have written a textbook on the Modern Synthesis, or stand
> condemned for not monopolizing over half of the special issue of the
> special issue of "Interface Focus 7: 20170015" by writing a complete
> [and YOU arrogate to yourself the right to judge HOW complete]
> description of how the Modern Synthesis works.
>
> His article can be found in:
> http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015
>
> and if you scroll to the bottom, you will see arrowheads marked
> Previous and Next
> which let you navigate all through the issue.
>
> The "Previous" takes you right away to a five-author introduction
> to the whole issue, complete with a table of contents that is
> navigable to all the rest of the contributions.

Neither MS or EES correctly address the phenomenon of rmns.

>
>
> So you might as well go the whole hog and accuse every contributor
> of not knowing how rmns work because they did not give detailed
> criticisms/descriptions of how they are supposed to work
> in the Modern Synthesis.

If you think that anyone from the MS or EES group correctly describe rmns, post the quote or retract.

>
> And then you can repeat your flame about how I whine about
> ___________ [continue as above} instead of proceeding at your
> beck and call.

You even whine about your whining.

>
> > > > Muller can do oodles to try to obscure the mathematical facts of life but these facts won't disappear in the fog he produces.
> > >
> > > Heaping insults on insults like this is indicative of closed-minded
> > > prejudice.
>
>
> > Peter, you have no excuse.
>
> For not doing everything you want me to do at your beck and call?

You asked me to send copies of my papers, so stop whining.

>
> Who died and made you the moderator of talk.origins?

Who made you hall monitor?

>
> > You are a professor of mathematics but you haven't mastered the mathematics of stochastic processes.
>
> More of that dishonest "This would be a good place to have written..."
> arrogance.

Whine, whine, whine.

>
>
> > Stop whining and hit the books and learn this subject.
>
> Fallacy of begging the question.

You have more excuses than the teenager who didn't do his homework.

>
>
> > > > > Never heard of the EES? You have a lot of interesting reading ahead
> > > > > of you, if you click on one of those links.
> > >
> > > > Why don't you tell us how EES makes reptiles grow feathers?
> > >
> > > EES doesn't make anything inevitable, least of all the growing
> > > of feathers by animals that resemble birds far more than they
> > > resemble any living reptiles.
>
>
> > Anything goes?
>
> Non sequitur noted.
>
> > That sounds like a scientific theory for the reptiles grows feathers crowd.
>
> There you go again, talking about the empty set.
>
>
> > > Unlike you, I ask questions that are formulated fairly. For instance:
> > >
> > > Why don't you tell us whether God poofed birds and feathers into
> > > existence, or merely made the mutations that produced them have
> > > a probability of one?
>
> > I don't waste my time on stupid questions
>
> Let me guess: it is stupid because you go by a definition of
> "creationism" which does NOT call the Behe-style "merely
> made the mutations" hypothesis "creationism" but
> REQUIRES that God poof birds, complete with feathers, into
> existence *ex nihilo*,
>
> Actually, that's my concept of creationism too, but I wasn't
> sure it was yours. And since you admit to being a creationist,
> you are only digging yourself in deeper by continuing to duck
> the question.

None of this is pertinent to understanding how survival of the fittest and the mathematics of improvement of fitness works.

>
>
> > Once you understand introductory probability theory, then you will understand why your question is so silly.
>
> Complete bullshit. NO ONE could possibly divine which kind of
> creationist you are by reading all the books on probability
> theory that have ever been published.

I'm not into divining, I'm trying to have a discussion on hard mathematical science. You do understand something about mathematics, don't you?

>
> <more bullshit by you snipped here, but dealt with if you insist>
>
>
> > > > > PS I did find one glaring shortcoming in Muller's paper, but it has nothing
> > > > > to do with anything you've ever tried to deal with.
> > > > >
> > > > > Curious? Just ask and I'll tell you what it is.
> > >
> > > > Everybody knows you didn't quite get the mathematics of probability theory
> > >
> > > Stop trolling. You have no evidence for this insult, none whatsoever.
>
>
> <snip claims dealt with in a reply yesterday to a different post of yours>
>
>
> > > > so you wouldn't recognize if Muller had more than one glaring shortcoming.
> > >
> > > I don't think you can actually document a single one. You certainly have NOT
> > > documented a single one, whereas I can tell you exactly where to find the
> > > big weakness I have found. It is in the middle of Section 3.4.
> > >
> > > See if you can spot it.
>
> I don't think you know enough about evolution or paleontology
> [either would do] to spot it, and I don't expect you ever to
> try to prove I am wrong about this.
>
> > Muller's one fundamental error is enough for me.
>
> Of not monopolizing more than half that special issue? Everything
> you have written so far suggests that this is the ONLY "fundamental
> error" -- in fact the ONLY "error" -- you have been able to find.

Good for you if you have found other errors in Mullers mishmash.

>
>
> > If you find more, good for you. Of course you don't recognize the error Muller makes with his description of population genetics.
>
> And you have not been able to show that he made any such error.
> Your taunts after the passages you quoted from him were
> Ron Okimoto style non-sequiturs.

I assure you, my mathematics is quite sequitur.

>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

[jillery]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 11:07:55 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos

<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Saturday, January 20, 2018 at 1:35:03 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
>> On Fri, 19 Jan 2018 13:34:42 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
>> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> >By the way, here is the closing paragraph of Carlip's post, picking
>> >up where the quotation from him up there leaves off:
>> >
>> >> > Your "Unmoved Mover" proposal, as far as I can tell, doesn't do that.
>> >> > Perhaps I'm wrong, though. Can you give an example of *anything* that
>> >> > we might observe in the future that would be incompatible with your
>> >> > proposal, that would demonstrate that it was wrong?
>> >>
>> >> > Steve Carlip
>> >
>> >Similarly, can anyone give an example of *anything* that might
>> >evolve in the future that is physically possible but is incompatible
>> >with extrapolation from the present using ONLY the Modern Synthesis?
>>
>>
>> You presume a false equivalence.
>
>Wrong. There are differences, to be sure, but I said "similarly"
>and I certainly don't claim they are completely similar, whatever
>that might mean.

Wrong. Any similarity between them is inconsequential to the
equivalence you presume above.

>> An Unmoved Mover would be a
>> supernatural Agent, by definition,
>
>AFAIK Aristotle originated the concept, and IIRC he did NOT
>claim any supernatural powers for the Unmoved Mover.
>See my post to Pagano yesterday for more about this.

The concept itself describes a supernatural agent, something that
moves but is not itself moved.

>> capable of creating physically
>> impossible things, by definition.
>
>Capability is not the issue. When the subject of predictions
>is involved, one predicts of a hypothesized volitional entity what
>[s]he thinks that entity WOULD do, not what it is CAPABLE of doing.

Capability is the actual issue. What said entity would do is
necessarily a subset of what said entity is capable of doing, and
there is no way to identify which elements to exclude.

>A deist, for instance, might predict that the Unmoved Mover,
>having made the universe, would do NOTHING to it in the future,
>despite having a huge capacity for doing all kinds of things.

Word games. If a Deist's premise is an Unmoved Mover who only starts
the universe, that is its capacity as defined. Others may presume
different agents with different abilities as it suits them, but they
would remain separate agents with separate abilities, by definition.

>Christians who identify the Christian God with the unmoved
>mover, nevertheless would recognize ways in which the Bible
>(especially the NT) describes constraints this Trinity
>puts on Themselves, and frame their predictions accordingly.

My experience is those who presume Unmoved Movers make little effort
to be precise about what their presumptive Mover can and can't do. To
the contrary, they devote their energies evading such specifications,
and much effort is wasted dancing around that point.

>> Predictions using the Modern
>> Synthesis would be limited to reality, a substantially smaller set of
>> possibilities.
>
>For "using" read "consistent with."
>
>For "reality" read "things consistent with the science of physics"
>
>And the point is, both camps are to work within the limits they have
>set for themselves, but do not impose any other limits. That, at least,
>is the way I have interpreted Steven Carlip's challenges to Joe.

One feature of any hypothetical is its internal consistency. That's
what you describe above.

A separate feature of any hypothetical is its degree of rigor. An
hypothesis which deals with exceptions by applying ad hoc solutions
lacks rigor, ex. geocentrism, as anything can revolve around anything
else regardless of mass or speed. It provides no explanatory power.

In a similar way, the Deist's starter deity you describe above doesn't
qualify as rigorous, as it provides no constraints on what kind of
universe said Mover could start. It's an unnecessary agent.

Of course, the Modern Synthesis is about how life evolves, and not
about how the Universe formed. But that's not what concerns me here.
The relevant distinction is that the Modern Synthesis asserts
necessary constraints, ex. that evolutionary change is contingent on
the environment and prior life. So, a Deist's Mover would have no
problem making a preCambrian rabbit, while the Modern Synthesis
excludes it.

That is the fundamental distinction which makes the comparison to
which you allude above a false equivalence.

>And Joe has been absent from talk.origins since Christmas, so I
>don't know whether Joe identifies the Unmoved Mover as the Christian God,
>or some deistic version of God, or....

Then it would be most reasonable to let Joe speak for himself when and
if he returns. I'm sure that your employers, to whom you refer below,
would agree.

>Peter Nyikos
>Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
>Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia, SC
>http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[IDentity]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 11:43:30 -0500, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>You allude to a Creationist PRATT, that specific mutations should
>happen as needed. As has been pointed out to you many times by many
>posters, mutations are random with respect to the environment. Your
>failure to understand that simple fact shows you have no idea what
>you're talking about.

It has actually been demonstrated experimentally (Bruce Lipton) that
adaptation to the environment is an intelligent process which reacts
to environmental changes and triggers those genetic codes that are
required for a successful adaptation. Adaptation can that way take
place with precise determination and at an incredible speed which also
has been observed in nature:

"Italian wall lizards introduced to a tiny island off the coast of
Croatia are evolving in ways that would normally take millions of
years to play out, new research shows.

In just a few decades the 5-inch-long (13-centimeter-long) lizards
have developed a completely new gut structure, larger heads, and a
harder bite, researchers say...

The transplanted lizards adapted to their new environment in ways that
expedited their evolution physically, Irschick explained.

Pod Mrcaru, for example, had an abundance of plants for the primarily
insect-eating lizards to munch on. Physically, however, the lizards
were not built to digest a vegetarian diet.

Researchers found that the lizards developed cecal valves—muscles
between the large and small intestine—that slowed down food digestion
in fermenting chambers, which allowed their bodies to process the
vegetation's cellulose into volatile fatty acids.

"They evolved an expanded gut to allow them to process these leaves,"
Irschick said, adding it was something that had not been documented
before. "This was a brand-new structure."

Along with the ability to digest plants came the ability to bite
harder, powered by a head that had grown longer and wider...

Such physical transformation in just 30 lizard generations takes
evolution to a whole new level, Irschick said."

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080421-lizard-evolution.html

[IDentity]

More about intelligent adaptation to environment:


"Central bearded dragon lizards usually develop into males or females
depending on the sex chromosomes they inherit. But the study team
found that turning up the heat during incubation caused unborn lizards
to switch sex inside their eggs.

It had previously been assumed that an animal's gender could be
determined either by genes or by temperature as an embryo develops but
not by both...

Shine said that the new findings "verify a remarkable phenomenon."

"The evidence that nest temperatures can override sex chromosomes is
absolutely clear-cut," he commented.

"The work is exciting because it suggests that a long-held dogma in
this research field—that in any given population, sex is determined by
a single process—is now in tatters.

"The factors that determine an animal's sex are truly basic to its
biology, and it's becoming increasingly clear that we don't really
understand what those factors are, at least in some major groups of
animals...

Reptiles like the central bearded dragon might be able to switch
between genes and temperature as sex determiners in order to adapt to
changing environmental conditions, he suggested."

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070419-sex-lizards.html

[Öö Tiib]

On Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:55:05 UTC+2, IDentity wrote:
> More about intelligent adaptation to environment:
>
>
> "Central bearded dragon lizards usually develop into males or females
> depending on the sex chromosomes they inherit. But the study team
> found that turning up the heat during incubation caused unborn lizards
> to switch sex inside their eggs."

Most vertebrates (besides mammals) have species with number of
reproductible adaptation capabilities (up to parthenogenesis). Why it
is "intelligent"? Every such capability also costs something.

[Öö Tiib]

On Thursday, 25 January 2018 11:25:03 UTC+2, IDentity wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 11:43:30 -0500, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> >You allude to a Creationist PRATT, that specific mutations should
> >happen as needed. As has been pointed out to you many times by many
> >posters, mutations are random with respect to the environment. Your
> >failure to understand that simple fact shows you have no idea what
> >you're talking about.
>
> It has actually been demonstrated experimentally (Bruce Lipton) that
> adaptation to the environment is an intelligent process which reacts
> to environmental changes and triggers those genetic codes that are
> required for a successful adaptation. Adaptation can that way take
> place with precise determination and at an incredible speed which also
> has been observed in nature:
>
> "Italian wall lizards introduced to a tiny island off the coast of
> Croatia are evolving in ways that would normally take millions of
> years to play out, new research shows."

There are still teeth genes in chickens and tail genes in humans.
That does not show that restoring mutations to activate those
genes are not random but intelligent. It shows that ancestors of
chicken had teeth and ancestors of humans had tails.
It likely takes only few generations to restore those when these
provide seriously advantageous capabilities because few rare
people randomly born with tails anyway. Currently with no
advantage but more like disadvantage so there are only few.

[jillery]

On Thu, 25 Jan 2018 10:19:18 +0100, IDentity <iden...@invalid.org>
wrote:

Stipulating for argument's sake the facts as stated above are correct,
those facts show standard biological evolution through natural
selection and genetic drift. The new population is the result of not
only random chance matations of the founding population, but also of
natural selection both 1) selecting those mutations which work better,
and 2) eliminating those mutations which do less well.

Biological evolution is an intelligent process in the sense that its
outcomes can mitigate challenges, as illustrated above. It is not
intelligent in the sense that its outcomes are consciously chosen or
directed, either by the organisms themselves, or by an external Agent.

An example of Intelligent Adaptation would have been for those lizards
to grow wings and fly back to Croatia, or even better, to some lizard
paradise.

[jillery]

On Thu, 25 Jan 2018 10:44:40 +0100, IDentity <iden...@invalid.org>
wrote:

>
>
>More about intelligent adaptation to environment:
>
>
>"Central bearded dragon lizards usually develop into males or females
>depending on the sex chromosomes they inherit. But the study team
>found that turning up the heat during incubation caused unborn lizards
>to switch sex inside their eggs.
>
>It had previously been assumed that an animal's gender could be
>determined either by genes or by temperature as an embryo develops but
>not by both...
>
>Shine said that the new findings "verify a remarkable phenomenon."
>
>"The evidence that nest temperatures can override sex chromosomes is
>absolutely clear-cut," he commented.
>
>"The work is exciting because it suggests that a long-held dogma in

>this research field葉hat in any given population, sex is determined by
>a single process擁s now in tatters.

>
>"The factors that determine an animal's sex are truly basic to its
>biology, and it's becoming increasingly clear that we don't really
>understand what those factors are, at least in some major groups of
>animals...
>
>Reptiles like the central bearded dragon might be able to switch
>between genes and temperature as sex determiners in order to adapt to
>changing environmental conditions, he suggested."
>
>https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070419-sex-lizards.html

There are lots of reptiles where gender is determined by temperature.
Not sure how you think that's an example of intelligent adaptation.
How does changing the sex ratio improve the weather one bit?

[Peter Nyikos]

I see there has been some new activity, on-topic too, since I
began a new thread in which I am in the process of demonstrating
how little Kleinman really knows about the mathematical theory
of probability:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/cUFAn6vukD4/Yx9RlZNqBgAJ

Kleinman has been too wrapped up in obfuscating on the new thread
to participate in this new activity. I'll let him know about it
later today.

On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 2:55:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 10:40:03 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:55:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 12:50:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 7:40:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 10:10:06 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Improving fitness is a different physical phenomenon governed by different mathematical principles.
> > > > > You won't find the mathematics of improved fitness in any population genetics texts at this time.
> > > >
> > > > What about published papers? Are you sure you've adequately surveyed
> > > > them? Have you been over the ones referenced by Muller?

Kleinman, you ducked these questions, yet on the new thread you
accused Muller of ignorance of how fitness works, without even
hinting about how he allegedly showed it, let alone trying
to document it.

Should ANYBODY be surprised by ANY of this?

> > > Who in the reptiles grow feathers crowd has correctly described how rmns works?
> >
> > There is no such crowd. When I asked you to specify WHICH reptiles
> > you accuse them of claiming to grow feathers, you ducked the question
> > by transparently joking "turtles" and then corrected to "maybe lizards,"
> > both of which are transparently false.

Instead of trying to correct this, you doubled down on the insults:

> Sure, there is a crowd that believes reptiles grow feathers. These are the advocates of the theory of DumbAndDumberDesign.

The first of the two sentences remains unjustified, and the second
completes your GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out).

> I do not believe that reptiles grow feathers. They sometimes talk about an ArchieDumbtrex fossil,

From your derogatory designation, one might conclude that you
think all fossils of Archaeopteryx are forgeries. Do you indeed
claim that?


<huge snip of things to reply to if you care>

> > > I keep waiting for you to show us how Muller explains how rmns works.
> >
> > Why? You accused Muller of being ignorant of it, so it is up
> > to YOU to show where he botched the alleged explanation.

> Muller makes no explanation on the subject of rmns.

Here, you implicitly admit that you LIED about having caught
Muller in an error about them.

And thus, the following brazen allegation becomes another display of GIGO.

> And Muller is not the only one ignorant on this subject.
> >
> >
> > > Instead you whine when I say he doesn't explain this and neither does any other biologist I know.
> >
> > See above about the 1000+ line analogy. It would seem that you think
> > Muller should have written a textbook on the Modern Synthesis, or stand
> > condemned for not monopolizing over half of the special issue of the
> > special issue of "Interface Focus 7: 20170015" by writing a complete
> > [and YOU arrogate to yourself the right to judge HOW complete]
> > description of how the Modern Synthesis works.
> >
> > His article can be found in:
> > http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015
> >
> > and if you scroll to the bottom, you will see arrowheads marked
> > Previous and Next
> > which let you navigate all through the issue.
> >
> > The "Previous" takes you right away to a five-author introduction
> > to the whole issue, complete with a table of contents that is
> > navigable to all the rest of the contributions.

> Neither MS or EES correctly address the phenomenon of rmns.

Come off it! You show no sign of having read ANY of the other
articles in that issue, nor of knowing what EES is all about.

> >
> > So you might as well go the whole hog and accuse every contributor
> > of not knowing how rmns work because they did not give detailed
> > criticisms/descriptions of how they are supposed to work
> > in the Modern Synthesis.

> If you think that anyone from the MS or EES group correctly describe rmns, post the quote or retract.

Ducking of challenge noted.


<snip torrent of arrogant, unjustified insults by you>

I get the impression that you don't care one way or another
whether God exists, or whether life on earth evolved from
unicellular organisms. All you care about is getting recognition
for having done something you are too coy to demonstrate having
done in talk.origins.

CORRECT?

> >
> > > Once you understand introductory probability theory, then you will understand why your question is so silly.
> >
> > Complete bullshit. NO ONE could possibly divine which kind of
> > creationist you are by reading all the books on probability
> > theory that have ever been published.

> I'm not into divining, I'm trying to have a discussion on hard mathematical science. You do understand something about mathematics, don't you?

Far more than you do, even where the mathematical theory of
probability is concerned, as I am showing on that new thread.

> > <more bullshit by you snipped here, but dealt with if you insist>
> >

Nice to see you didn't insist. There may be hope for you yet.

> > > > > > PS I did find one glaring shortcoming in Muller's paper, but it has nothing
> > > > > > to do with anything you've ever tried to deal with.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Curious? Just ask and I'll tell you what it is.
> > > >
> > > > > Everybody knows you didn't quite get the mathematics of probability theory
> > > >
> > > > Stop trolling. You have no evidence for this insult, none whatsoever.
> >
> >
> > <snip claims dealt with in a reply yesterday to a different post of yours>
> >
> >
> > > > > so you wouldn't recognize if Muller had more than one glaring shortcoming.
> > > >
> > > > I don't think you can actually document a single one. You certainly have NOT
> > > > documented a single one, whereas I can tell you exactly where to find the
> > > > big weakness I have found. It is in the middle of Section 3.4.
> > > >
> > > > See if you can spot it.
> >
> > I don't think you know enough about evolution or paleontology
> > [either would do] to spot it, and I don't expect you ever to
> > try to prove I am wrong about this.

You certainly didn't try here.

> > > Muller's one fundamental error is enough for me.
> >
> > Of not monopolizing more than half that special issue? Everything
> > you have written so far suggests that this is the ONLY "fundamental
> > error" -- in fact the ONLY "error" -- you have been able to find.

> Good for you if you have found other errors in Mullers mishmash.

...in contrast to the ZERO you have found so far.

> >
> > > If you find more, good for you. Of course you don't recognize the error Muller makes with his description of population genetics.
> >
> > And you have not been able to show that he made any such error.
> > Your taunts after the passages you quoted from him were
> > Ron Okimoto style non-sequiturs.

Evasive to the last, you make no attempt to refute what I wrote
just now, but resort to yet another non sequitur:

> I assure you, my mathematics is quite sequitur.
> >

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
Univ. of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 4:55:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> I see there has been some new activity, on-topic too, since I
> began a new thread in which I am in the process of demonstrating
> how little Kleinman really knows about the mathematical theory
> of probability:
>
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/cUFAn6vukD4/Yx9RlZNqBgAJ
>
> Kleinman has been too wrapped up in obfuscating on the new thread
> to participate in this new activity. I'll let him know about it
> later today.

If you call doing the math obfuscation, then I'm obfuscating.

>
> On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 2:55:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 10:40:03 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:55:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 12:50:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 7:40:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 10:10:06 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > Improving fitness is a different physical phenomenon governed by different mathematical principles.
> > > > > > You won't find the mathematics of improved fitness in any population genetics texts at this time.
> > > > >
> > > > > What about published papers? Are you sure you've adequately surveyed
> > > > > them? Have you been over the ones referenced by Muller?
>
> Kleinman, you ducked these questions, yet on the new thread you
> accused Muller of ignorance of how fitness works, without even
> hinting about how he allegedly showed it, let alone trying
> to document it.
>
> Should ANYBODY be surprised by ANY of this?

There are actually two ways to measure fitness. The traditional way consists of measuring fitness by the (change in) relative frequency of a variant in a population. This works well when doing the mathematics of survival of the fittest. But surprise, you can also measure fitness by the absolute fitness to reproduce, the number of replications a particular variant can do. This is the way you have to measure fitness if you want to do the mathematics of improving fitness. Muller only considers differential fitness to reproduce, the former measure. And so do all biologists. This is why they don't understand the math and physics of rmns.

>
> > > > Who in the reptiles grow feathers crowd has correctly described how rmns works?
> > >
> > > There is no such crowd. When I asked you to specify WHICH reptiles
> > > you accuse them of claiming to grow feathers, you ducked the question
> > > by transparently joking "turtles" and then corrected to "maybe lizards,"
> > > both of which are transparently false.
>
> Instead of trying to correct this, you doubled down on the insults:

The truth hurts.

>
>
> > Sure, there is a crowd that believes reptiles grow feathers. These are the advocates of the theory of DumbAndDumberDesign.
>
> The first of the two sentences remains unjustified, and the second
> completes your GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out).

Before you claim GIGO, you first need to understand the model and physics, which you don't, and then see whether the predictions of the model correlate with reality, which my model does.

>
>
> > I do not believe that reptiles grow feathers. They sometimes talk about an ArchieDumbtrex fossil,
>
>
> From your derogatory designation, one might conclude that you
> think all fossils of Archaeopteryx are forgeries. Do you indeed
> claim that?

It doesn't matter whether it is a forgery or not. It is an interpretation based on confirmation bias and a total lack of understanding of the mechanisms of genetic transformation. Anyone who can seriously take the primordial soup as the source of life will certainly have difficulty interpreting fossils and claim that they show reptiles growing feathers.

>
>
> <huge snip of things to reply to if you care>
>
>
> > > > I keep waiting for you to show us how Muller explains how rmns works.
> > >
> > > Why? You accused Muller of being ignorant of it, so it is up
> > > to YOU to show where he botched the alleged explanation.
>
> > Muller makes no explanation on the subject of rmns.
>
> Here, you implicitly admit that you LIED about having caught
> Muller in an error about them.

Stop being a nitwit (if you are capable of that). If you think that Muller has made an explanation of how rmns works, post the quote from his paper or from anything he has published.

>
> And thus, the following brazen allegation becomes another display of GIGO.

If you think that I'm being brazen by quoting what Muller says, well so be it.

>
> > And Muller is not the only one ignorant on this subject.
> > >
> > >
> > > > Instead you whine when I say he doesn't explain this and neither does any other biologist I know.
> > >
> > > See above about the 1000+ line analogy. It would seem that you think
> > > Muller should have written a textbook on the Modern Synthesis, or stand
> > > condemned for not monopolizing over half of the special issue of the
> > > special issue of "Interface Focus 7: 20170015" by writing a complete
> > > [and YOU arrogate to yourself the right to judge HOW complete]
> > > description of how the Modern Synthesis works.
> > >
> > > His article can be found in:
> > > http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015
> > >
> > > and if you scroll to the bottom, you will see arrowheads marked
> > > Previous and Next
> > > which let you navigate all through the issue.
> > >
> > > The "Previous" takes you right away to a five-author introduction
> > > to the whole issue, complete with a table of contents that is
> > > navigable to all the rest of the contributions.
>
> > Neither MS or EES correctly address the phenomenon of rmns.
>
> Come off it! You show no sign of having read ANY of the other
> articles in that issue, nor of knowing what EES is all about.

If any of these articles explain how rmns works and contradicts my model then post the link. I already know you don't understand how rmns works. Why should I read more papers which can't explain this phenomenon? I've taken years worth of biology courses and was never taught how this phenomenon works. If you wanted to learn about variational calculus, you would pick up a book or read papers by authors who know something about the subject. Not by people who can only speculate about the subject.

>
> > >
> > > So you might as well go the whole hog and accuse every contributor
> > > of not knowing how rmns work because they did not give detailed
> > > criticisms/descriptions of how they are supposed to work
> > > in the Modern Synthesis.
>
> > If you think that anyone from the MS or EES group correctly describe rmns, post the quote or retract.
>
> Ducking of challenge noted.

Your incessant quacking reveals who the duck is here. You know the old cliche about the Secret Service. "Federal agents don’t learn to spot counterfeit money by studying the counterfeits. They study genuine bills until they master the look of the real thing. Then when they see the bogus money they recognize it." Muller and his ilk are producing counterfeit explanation of how evolution works. Read and understand my math for the real thing.

>
>
> <snip torrent of arrogant, unjustified insults by you>

Whine, whine, whine

Oh, I care whether God exists. And I care whether physicians understand how drug resistance occurs. You would too if you ever had a drug-resistant infection.
>
> CORRECT?
Whatever you think my motives are, you should be more concerned whether I am right or not. And if you think I'm not right, post your evidence. Instead, you duck the challenge. Stop quacking.

>
> > >
> > > > Once you understand introductory probability theory, then you will understand why your question is so silly.
> > >
> > > Complete bullshit. NO ONE could possibly divine which kind of
> > > creationist you are by reading all the books on probability
> > > theory that have ever been published.
>
> > I'm not into divining, I'm trying to have a discussion on hard mathematical science. You do understand something about mathematics, don't you?
>
> Far more than you do, even where the mathematical theory of
> probability is concerned, as I am showing on that new thread.

Prove it, show where my mathematics and physics is wrong instead of quacking how great a mathematician you are. You won't because you are more interested in quacking.

>
>
> > > <more bullshit by you snipped here, but dealt with if you insist>
> > >
>
> Nice to see you didn't insist. There may be hope for you yet.

What I insist is that you deal with the mathematics and physics of the model I've presented, instead, all you do is quack, quack, quack.

>
> > > > > > > PS I did find one glaring shortcoming in Muller's paper, but it has nothing
> > > > > > > to do with anything you've ever tried to deal with.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Curious? Just ask and I'll tell you what it is.
> > > > >
> > > > > > Everybody knows you didn't quite get the mathematics of probability theory
> > > > >
> > > > > Stop trolling. You have no evidence for this insult, none whatsoever.
> > >
> > >
> > > <snip claims dealt with in a reply yesterday to a different post of yours>
> > >
> > >
> > > > > > so you wouldn't recognize if Muller had more than one glaring shortcoming.
> > > > >
> > > > > I don't think you can actually document a single one. You certainly have NOT
> > > > > documented a single one, whereas I can tell you exactly where to find the
> > > > > big weakness I have found. It is in the middle of Section 3.4.
> > > > >
> > > > > See if you can spot it.
> > >
> > > I don't think you know enough about evolution or paleontology
> > > [either would do] to spot it, and I don't expect you ever to
> > > try to prove I am wrong about this.
>
> You certainly didn't try here.

I'm not interested in your distractions. And you certainly haven't shown that you understand more about probability theory than I do. You still haven't shown that the Down's mutation is not random, with or without the independent or dependent modifier.

>
>
> > > > Muller's one fundamental error is enough for me.
> > >
> > > Of not monopolizing more than half that special issue? Everything
> > > you have written so far suggests that this is the ONLY "fundamental
> > > error" -- in fact the ONLY "error" -- you have been able to find.
>
> > Good for you if you have found other errors in Mullers mishmash.
>
> ...in contrast to the ZERO you have found so far.

How would you know? This would require that you understand the physics and mathematics of Haldane and Kimura and how it is applied. You certainly haven't demonstrated that. All you do is quack, quack, quack.

>
> > >
> > > > If you find more, good for you. Of course you don't recognize the error Muller makes with his description of population genetics.
> > >
> > > And you have not been able to show that he made any such error.
> > > Your taunts after the passages you quoted from him were
> > > Ron Okimoto style non-sequiturs.
>
> Evasive to the last, you make no attempt to refute what I wrote
> just now, but resort to yet another non sequitur:

Peter quack, quack, quacks.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
[snip]

>
> Come off it! You show no sign of having read ANY of the other
> articles in that issue, nor of knowing what EES is all about.
>

What exactly are the selling points of EES that make it an attractive
alternative to the MS? Does it go any further than your proclivity for
taking in strays (eg- directed panspermy) and nurturing them as you always
do? The evodevo stuff stands on its own and represents an outright
opportunistic co-option by the EES crowd. Niche construction sounds
interesting and in the case of a beaver dam or animal husbandry and
subsequent dairying of humans (blessed are the cheesemakers) just something
already known renamed. But the epigenetics part seems too much force-fed
Lamarckian hogwash that relies on effects that are at best ephemeral and
not a challenge to MS.

Are you collecting stuff you think challenges evolutionary orthodoxy?

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

Peter has gotten into his head that he is the only person who can understand and solve a mathematical problem. And biologists show the same kind of arrogance by claiming only they can understand a biological phenomenon. I suspect Muller wrote his essay on EES because population genetics does not support the concept of common descent and was looking for some other way to justifying the TOE. And what I mean by the concept of common descent, the primordial soup replicator to today's life forms.

[jillery]

On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:49:48 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net> wrote:

>On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 7:25:04 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> >
>> [snip]
>> >
>> > Come off it! You show no sign of having read ANY of the other
>> > articles in that issue, nor of knowing what EES is all about.
>> >
>> What exactly are the selling points of EES that make it an attractive
>> alternative to the MS? Does it go any further than your proclivity for
>> taking in strays (eg- directed panspermy) and nurturing them as you always
>> do? The evodevo stuff stands on its own and represents an outright
>> opportunistic co-option by the EES crowd. Niche construction sounds
>> interesting and in the case of a beaver dam or animal husbandry and
>> subsequent dairying of humans (blessed are the cheesemakers) just something
>> already known renamed. But the epigenetics part seems too much force-fed
>> Lamarckian hogwash that relies on effects that are at best ephemeral and
>> not a challenge to MS.
>>
>> Are you collecting stuff you think challenges evolutionary orthodoxy?
>
>Peter has gotten into his head that he is the only person who can understand and solve a mathematical problem.

You sound jealous. You don't have to be the only one.

>And biologists show the same kind of arrogance by claiming only they can understand a biological phenomenon. I suspect Muller wrote his essay on EES because population genetics does not support the concept of common descent and was looking for some other way to justifying the TOE. And what I mean by the concept of common descent, the primordial soup replicator to today's life forms.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 10:40:02 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:49:48 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> wrote:
>
> >On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 7:25:04 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> >> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >> >
> >> [snip]
> >> >
> >> > Come off it! You show no sign of having read ANY of the other
> >> > articles in that issue, nor of knowing what EES is all about.
> >> >
> >> What exactly are the selling points of EES that make it an attractive
> >> alternative to the MS? Does it go any further than your proclivity for
> >> taking in strays (eg- directed panspermy) and nurturing them as you always
> >> do? The evodevo stuff stands on its own and represents an outright
> >> opportunistic co-option by the EES crowd. Niche construction sounds
> >> interesting and in the case of a beaver dam or animal husbandry and
> >> subsequent dairying of humans (blessed are the cheesemakers) just something
> >> already known renamed. But the epigenetics part seems too much force-fed
> >> Lamarckian hogwash that relies on effects that are at best ephemeral and
> >> not a challenge to MS.
> >>
> >> Are you collecting stuff you think challenges evolutionary orthodoxy?
> >
> >Peter has gotten into his head that he is the only person who can understand and solve a mathematical problem.
>
>
> You sound jealous. You don't have to be the only one.

I am! Life is so unfair that I can't do mathematics like Barbie. What's that acronym that you computer experts use? Oh yea, LOL.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 10:25:04 AM UTC-5, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >
> [snip]
> >
> > Come off it! You show no sign of having read ANY of the other
> > articles in that issue, nor of knowing what EES is all about.
> >
> What exactly are the selling points of EES that make it an attractive
> alternative to the MS?

It goes part of the way towards establishing something worthy
of being called a Theory of Evolution.

Didn't you read the OP? It has a veiled reference to you,
you know, and your quasi-religious belief in the potency of the MS.


Were YOU able to spot the glaring weakness that I've been
quizzing Kleinman about? If not, it looks like you only
read the titles of sections without trying to see what
Muller actually has to say in them.

<snip flamebait by you>

> The evodevo stuff stands on its own and represents an outright
> opportunistic co-option by the EES crowd.

Incorrigible polemicist that you are, you make opportunistic
insults which show that you aren't the least bit interested
in something worthy of the name, "The Theory of Evolution."

You are quite happy to extrapolate from the microevolution
which the MS is all about, and ignore the question of HOW and WHY
evolution progressed the way it did, starting with
over 2.5 billion years of nothing but unicellular forms,
until about 750 million years ago.

What does your beloved MS tell you about WHY evolution
exploded in one-tenth (1/10)th that time,
with the last 75 million of those years easily outdoing the rest?
What does it tell you about HOW it did that?

What does your beloved MS tell you about the next
250 million years, or the final 250 million, at the end of which
the two of us are arguing with each other about it?

Does your knowledge of paleontology even go as far as
what I described in my SECOND post to this thread about
those three 250 million year blocs? Or do you just
view talk.origins as a showcase for your polemical talents,
the way Kleinman views it as a showcase for his?

> Niche construction sounds
> interesting and in the case of a beaver dam or animal husbandry and
> subsequent dairying of humans (blessed are the cheesemakers) just something
> already known renamed.

You are blessing some of the people who are indirectly responsible
for global warming by encouraging the multiplication of methane-exuding
cattle.

And it looks like you are content to have a huge jigsaw puzzle
of specialized mini-theories rather than a single coherent
Theory of Evolution.

> But the epigenetics part seems too much force-fed
> Lamarckian hogwash that relies on effects that are at best ephemeral and
> not a challenge to MS.

You are just giving away the fact that you didn't read the
epigenetics part carefully, if at all.

>
> Are you collecting stuff you think challenges evolutionary orthodoxy?

No, the special issue of Interface Focus shows how professionals are doing
that. If you clicked on the url Erik provided, you were treated to an
subsequent article that corrected the numbers of the references, but you missed
out on those little white arrowheads that let you navigate all through
that issue:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015

Those arrowheads with purple backgrounds at the bottom are what I
am referring to. If you click the one labeled "Previous" you will
get the introductory essay with its clickable table of contents.

If you are the least bit interested in the state of the art
in evolutionary theory, you have lots of articles to make snide
remarks about -- or to actually read and learn from.

Your choice.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolin
http://people.main.sc.esu/nyikos/
nyikos "at" math.sc.edu

[*Hemidactylus*]

You have insulted and condescended me until the lactating cows that some
humans genetic adapted to come home, but your udder failure to make a case
for EES is duly noted.

Anything having to do with gene-culture coevolution based on an alleged
secondary inheritance system pixie dusted into existence by the legendary
Richard Dawkins seems mostly confined to humans in the best case scenario.
That rides its own rails outside the genome with bidirectional leashing
assumptions.

If you wish to make a convincing case for EES especially the epigenetics
part you can start right here.

Good luck and good day.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 9:40:04 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 4:55:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > I see there has been some new activity, on-topic too, since I
> > began a new thread in which I am in the process of demonstrating
> > how little Kleinman really knows about the mathematical theory
> > of probability:
> >
> > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/cUFAn6vukD4/Yx9RlZNqBgAJ
> >
> > Kleinman has been too wrapped up in obfuscating on the new thread
> > to participate in this new activity.

And now you are too busy obfuscating in reply to me to even acknowledge
the new activity.

> If you call doing the math obfuscation, then I'm obfuscating.

Not on that thread. I've been doing all the math there, while
you have been talking about theoretical concepts such as
fair coins, which exist only in the imagination of people.

You said, while you were pretending to be talking
about real coins, that the longer the sequence of coin flips,
the closer the ratio between the total number of flips and
the number of heads (or tails, either will do) would be to 1/2.

This is only correct if you talk about the elusive hypothetical
"fair coin" and if you insert the qualifier that the ratio
can be expected, with an increasingly high probability,
to behave that way. But oscillations in the ratio are also to be
expected.

For a completely rigorous statement, you need to say that the
limit of the ratios go to 1/2 as one looks at the first n in an
infinite series of flips as n goes to infinity.

But that hardly even BEGINS to define a *random* coin, because
the following series of flips certainly passes that primitive
"ratio test," but is obviously non-random:

HTHTHTHTHTHTHTHT...

Can you give me a definition of how a randomly behaving coin acts?

> > On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 2:55:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 10:40:03 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:55:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 12:50:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 7:40:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 10:10:06 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > Improving fitness is a different physical phenomenon governed by different mathematical principles.
> > > > > > > You won't find the mathematics of improved fitness in any population genetics texts at this time.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > What about published papers? Are you sure you've adequately surveyed
> > > > > > them? Have you been over the ones referenced by Muller?
> >
> > Kleinman, you ducked these questions, yet on the new thread you
> > accused Muller of ignorance of how fitness works, without even
> > hinting about how he allegedly showed it, let alone trying
> > to document it.
> >
> > Should ANYBODY be surprised by ANY of this?

> There are actually two ways to measure fitness. The traditional way consists of measuring fitness by the (change in) relative frequency of a variant in a population. This works well when doing the mathematics of survival of the fittest. But surprise, you can also measure fitness by the absolute fitness to reproduce, the number of replications a particular variant can do. This is the way you have to measure fitness if you want to do the mathematics of improving fitness.

> Muller only considers differential fitness to reproduce, the former measure.

You have yet to quote the place where he does that.

And you ducked my question about the articles that he REFERENCED.


<huge snip of things to be dealt with next week. I'm chasing
an end-of-the-month deadline>

> > > > > I keep waiting for you to show us how Muller explains how rmns works.
> > > >
> > > > Why? You accused Muller of being ignorant of it, so it is up
> > > > to YOU to show where he botched the alleged explanation.
> >
> > > Muller makes no explanation on the subject of rmns.
> >
> > Here, you implicitly admit that you LIED about having caught
> > Muller in an error about them.

> Stop being a nitwit (if you are capable of that).

You are indulging in a dirty debating tactic that I have called
The Broken.Usenet.Promise.

The following was posted by me many years ago, because
I ran into this tactic so often:

It is a special case of what is
commonly called "a bait and switch". It usually consists of an
opening salvo like "False."or "What an idiot.", etc. followed
by something that might fool a complete ignoramus into thinking
that the opening salvo is being justified, whereas it is either
irrelevant, or obviously incompetent, or actually supports
the claims of the opponent.

> If you think that Muller has made an explanation of how rmns works, post the quote from his paper or from anything he has published.

See what I mean when I write, "or actually supports
the claims of the opponent." You are implicitly admitting,
yet again, that you never saw Muller ever trying to
describe how rmns work.

> >
> > And thus, the following brazen allegation becomes another display of GIGO.

> If you think that I'm being brazen by quoting what Muller says, well so be it.

You are being brazen by NOT quoting anything Muller said about rmns.

> > > And Muller is not the only one ignorant on this subject.

My charge of GIGO stands. Of course, you embellished it here
by making a generic charge about others.


I've snipped a lot where you CONTINUED to try to shift the burden of
proof on others in lieu of quoting anything that would save you
from the charge of having made a bare-faced lie about catching
Muller in an ignorant comment about rmns.

> > <snip torrent of arrogant, unjustified insults by you>
> Whine, whine, whine

Here is something I wrote that predates even the thing about
the Broken.Usenet.Promise:

WHINE: an inchoate concept as used on Usenet;
were it made logically consistent and defined
broadly enough to encompass the most influential
uses in talk.abortion, talk.origins and alt.abortion,
it would mean "anything that can be construed,
in however strained a way, as a complaint,"
and hence would encompass much or all
of each of the following:
the Declaration of Independence, the Communist
Manifesto, Martin Luther King's "I have a
dream" speech, Mark Antony's funeral oration
in Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_,
John the Baptist's denunciation of
Herod Antipas, and Jesus's "woe to you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites" rant [more at RANT].


Concluded in next reply to this mendacious post of yours.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[*Hemidactylus*]

Hold Alan’s feet to the fire. Make it burn.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 11:35:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 10:25:04 AM UTC-5, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> > Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > >
> > [snip]
> > >
> > > Come off it! You show no sign of having read ANY of the other
> > > articles in that issue, nor of knowing what EES is all about.
> > >
> > What exactly are the selling points of EES that make it an attractive
> > alternative to the MS?
>
> It goes part of the way towards establishing something worthy
> of being called a Theory of Evolution.
>
> Didn't you read the OP? It has a veiled reference to you,
> you know, and your quasi-religious belief in the potency of the MS.
>
>
> Were YOU able to spot the glaring weakness that I've been
> quizzing Kleinman about? If not, it looks like you only
> read the titles of sections without trying to see what
> Muller actually has to say in them.

Great use of logic when you also say: "It goes part of the way towards establishing something worthy of being called a Theory of Evolution." I already know that Muller has a faulty understanding of population (which you also have). So what exactly do you see of value in Muller's mishmash?

> <snip flamebait by you>
>
>
> > The evodevo stuff stands on its own and represents an outright
> > opportunistic co-option by the EES crowd.
>
> Incorrigible polemicist that you are, you make opportunistic
> insults which show that you aren't the least bit interested
> in something worthy of the name, "The Theory of Evolution."

Everyone picks on the poor snowflake Peter. I've already suggested a new name for the TOE, the theory of DumbAndDumberDesign. It catches all the pertinent features of the theory including the primordial soup and reptiles grow feathers.

>
> You are quite happy to extrapolate from the microevolution
> which the MS is all about, and ignore the question of HOW and WHY
> evolution progressed the way it did, starting with
> over 2.5 billion years of nothing but unicellular forms,
> until about 750 million years ago.
>
> What does your beloved MS tell you about WHY evolution
> exploded in one-tenth (1/10)th that time,
> with the last 75 million of those years easily outdoing the rest?
> What does it tell you about HOW it did that?

What does your beloved mathematics tell you about this claim?

>
> What does your beloved MS tell you about the next
> 250 million years, or the final 250 million, at the end of which
> the two of us are arguing with each other about it?

What does your beloved mathematics tell you about this claim?

>
> Does your knowledge of paleontology even go as far as
> what I described in my SECOND post to this thread about
> those three 250 million year blocs? Or do you just
> view talk.origins as a showcase for your polemical talents,
> the way Kleinman views it as a showcase for his?

At least I've learned something from these debates, and that is how rmns actually works. I've learned how drug resistance occurs and had four papers published on the subject, and the fifth paper is now under review. What has EES taught you about evolution?

>
> > Niche construction sounds
> > interesting and in the case of a beaver dam or animal husbandry and
> > subsequent dairying of humans (blessed are the cheesemakers) just something
> > already known renamed.
>
> You are blessing some of the people who are indirectly responsible
> for global warming by encouraging the multiplication of methane-exuding
> cattle.

Beans should be outlawed as a threat to humanity. I'm starting to understand what you see in the EES.

>
> And it looks like you are content to have a huge jigsaw puzzle
> of specialized mini-theories rather than a single coherent
> Theory of Evolution.

The unified theory of dumb and dumber. A true advance in science.

>
>
> > But the epigenetics part seems too much force-fed
> > Lamarckian hogwash that relies on effects that are at best ephemeral and
> > not a challenge to MS.
>
> You are just giving away the fact that you didn't read the
> epigenetics part carefully, if at all.
>
>
> >
> > Are you collecting stuff you think challenges evolutionary orthodoxy?
>
> No, the special issue of Interface Focus shows how professionals are doing
> that. If you clicked on the url Erik provided, you were treated to an
> subsequent article that corrected the numbers of the references, but you missed
> out on those little white arrowheads that let you navigate all through
> that issue:
>
> http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015
>
> Those arrowheads with purple backgrounds at the bottom are what I
> am referring to. If you click the one labeled "Previous" you will
> get the introductory essay with its clickable table of contents.
>
> If you are the least bit interested in the state of the art
> in evolutionary theory, you have lots of articles to make snide
> remarks about -- or to actually read and learn from.

Do any of these papers not have glaring errors like the Muller paper?
>
> Your choice.
Natural Selection!

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 1:40:04 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 9:40:04 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 4:55:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > I see there has been some new activity, on-topic too, since I
> > > began a new thread in which I am in the process of demonstrating
> > > how little Kleinman really knows about the mathematical theory
> > > of probability:
> > >
> > > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/cUFAn6vukD4/Yx9RlZNqBgAJ
> > >
> > > Kleinman has been too wrapped up in obfuscating on the new thread
> > > to participate in this new activity.
>
> And now you are too busy obfuscating in reply to me to even acknowledge
> the new activity.
>
>
> > If you call doing the math obfuscation, then I'm obfuscating.
>
> Not on that thread. I've been doing all the math there, while
> you have been talking about theoretical concepts such as
> fair coins, which exist only in the imagination of people.

Probability theory works just fine with asymmetric outcome random experiments.

>
> You said, while you were pretending to be talking
> about real coins, that the longer the sequence of coin flips,
> the closer the ratio between the total number of flips and
> the number of heads (or tails, either will do) would be to 1/2.
>
> This is only correct if you talk about the elusive hypothetical
> "fair coin" and if you insert the qualifier that the ratio
> can be expected, with an increasingly high probability,
> to behave that way. But oscillations in the ratio are also to be
> expected.

If you are having a problem with the "fair coin" example, try the "fair die" which with many rolls will give about 1/6 1's, 1/6 2's,..., 1/6 6's in their outcomes. But that "fair die" in your mind is an elusive hypothetical.

>
> For a completely rigorous statement, you need to say that the
> limit of the ratios go to 1/2 as one looks at the first n in an
> infinite series of flips as n goes to infinity.

That illustrates the difference between the way engineers do mathematics and the way mathematicians to mathematics. I just need sufficient accuracy for all practical purposes. But if you want to do the mathematical proof for rmns, go for it.

>
> But that hardly even BEGINS to define a *random* coin, because
> the following series of flips certainly passes that primitive
> "ratio test," but is obviously non-random:
>
> HTHTHTHTHTHTHTHT...

That sequence represents only one of all the possible sequences you could get from tossing a coin. So do you claim that tossing a coin is not a random experiment?

>
> Can you give me a definition of how a randomly behaving coin acts?

I already have, you cannot predict the outcome of any given random experiment.

>
> > > On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 2:55:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 10:40:03 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:55:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 12:50:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 7:40:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 10:10:06 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Improving fitness is a different physical phenomenon governed by different mathematical principles.
> > > > > > > > You won't find the mathematics of improved fitness in any population genetics texts at this time.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > What about published papers? Are you sure you've adequately surveyed
> > > > > > > them? Have you been over the ones referenced by Muller?
> > >
> > > Kleinman, you ducked these questions, yet on the new thread you
> > > accused Muller of ignorance of how fitness works, without even
> > > hinting about how he allegedly showed it, let alone trying
> > > to document it.
> > >
> > > Should ANYBODY be surprised by ANY of this?
>
> > There are actually two ways to measure fitness. The traditional way consists of measuring fitness by the (change in) relative frequency of a variant in a population. This works well when doing the mathematics of survival of the fittest. But surprise, you can also measure fitness by the absolute fitness to reproduce, the number of replications a particular variant can do. This is the way you have to measure fitness if you want to do the mathematics of improving fitness.
>
> > Muller only considers differential fitness to reproduce, the former measure.
>
> You have yet to quote the place where he does that.

I did and you snipped the reference. Go back to my previous post and you will find the quote.

>
> And you ducked my question about the articles that he REFERENCED.

Why should I even consider your questions when you snip and ignore Muller's quotes that I've posted and explained where he only considers differential fitness to reproduce.

>
>
> <huge snip of things to be dealt with next week. I'm chasing
> an end-of-the-month deadline>

Next you will be claim the dog ate your homework.

>
>
> > > > > > I keep waiting for you to show us how Muller explains how rmns works.
> > > > >
> > > > > Why? You accused Muller of being ignorant of it, so it is up
> > > > > to YOU to show where he botched the alleged explanation.
> > >
> > > > Muller makes no explanation on the subject of rmns.
> > >
> > > Here, you implicitly admit that you LIED about having caught
> > > Muller in an error about them.
>
> > Stop being a nitwit (if you are capable of that).
>
> You are indulging in a dirty debating tactic that I have called
> The Broken.Usenet.Promise.

You snip my posts and then call me a liar. You are a nitwit.

>
> The following was posted by me many years ago, because
> I ran into this tactic so often:
>
> It is a special case of what is
> commonly called "a bait and switch". It usually consists of an
> opening salvo like "False."or "What an idiot.", etc. followed
> by something that might fool a complete ignoramus into thinking
> that the opening salvo is being justified, whereas it is either
> irrelevant, or obviously incompetent, or actually supports
> the claims of the opponent.

Your debating tactics consist of snip and whine. Support your claims or retract.

>
>
> > If you think that Muller has made an explanation of how rmns works, post the quote from his paper or from anything he has published.
>
> See what I mean when I write, "or actually supports
> the claims of the opponent." You are implicitly admitting,
> yet again, that you never saw Muller ever trying to
> describe how rmns work.

Quack, quack, quack.

>
> > >
> > > And thus, the following brazen allegation becomes another display of GIGO.
>
> > If you think that I'm being brazen by quoting what Muller says, well so be it.
>
> You are being brazen by NOT quoting anything Muller said about rmns.

You are a liar, if you hadn't snipped my posts you would have seen the quotes I posted from Muller's paper. And there is nothing in Muller's paper about rmns to quote. Muller only writes about the survival of the fittest.

>
>
> > > > And Muller is not the only one ignorant on this subject.
>
> My charge of GIGO stands. Of course, you embellished it here
> by making a generic charge about others.

Whatever. I don't expect you to be writing any papers on the mathematics of drug resistance or evolution by rmns.

>
>
> I've snipped a lot where you CONTINUED to try to shift the burden of
> proof on others in lieu of quoting anything that would save you
> from the charge of having made a bare-faced lie about catching
> Muller in an ignorant comment about rmns.

I publish my claims, peer-reviewed by mathematicians skilled in this area of mathematics, which you are not. I've already taken the burden and published the results. I'm just testing you to see if you have the mathematical competence to understand this mathematics. You need a remedial course in probability theory.

>
>
> > > <snip torrent of arrogant, unjustified insults by you>
> > Whine, whine, whine
>
> Here is something I wrote that predates even the thing about
> the Broken.Usenet.Promise:
>
> WHINE: an inchoate concept as used on Usenet;
> were it made logically consistent and defined
> broadly enough to encompass the most influential
> uses in talk.abortion, talk.origins and alt.abortion,
> it would mean "anything that can be construed,
> in however strained a way, as a complaint,"
> and hence would encompass much or all
> of each of the following:
> the Declaration of Independence, the Communist
> Manifesto, Martin Luther King's "I have a
> dream" speech, Mark Antony's funeral oration
> in Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_,
> John the Baptist's denunciation of
> Herod Antipas, and Jesus's "woe to you, scribes
> and Pharisees, hypocrites" rant [more at RANT].
>
>
> Concluded in next reply to this mendacious post of yours.

So when someone says something to you which you don't understand, it's a lie? If you are not whining, you are quacking. Perhaps you could list some historical analogies for quacking.

[jillery]

On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 11:02:03 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net> wrote:

>On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 10:40:02 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:49:48 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> wrote:
>>
>> >On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 7:25:04 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>> >> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> [snip]
>> >> >
>> >> > Come off it! You show no sign of having read ANY of the other
>> >> > articles in that issue, nor of knowing what EES is all about.
>> >> >
>> >> What exactly are the selling points of EES that make it an attractive
>> >> alternative to the MS? Does it go any further than your proclivity for
>> >> taking in strays (eg- directed panspermy) and nurturing them as you always
>> >> do? The evodevo stuff stands on its own and represents an outright
>> >> opportunistic co-option by the EES crowd. Niche construction sounds
>> >> interesting and in the case of a beaver dam or animal husbandry and
>> >> subsequent dairying of humans (blessed are the cheesemakers) just something
>> >> already known renamed. But the epigenetics part seems too much force-fed
>> >> Lamarckian hogwash that relies on effects that are at best ephemeral and
>> >> not a challenge to MS.
>> >>
>> >> Are you collecting stuff you think challenges evolutionary orthodoxy?
>> >
>> >Peter has gotten into his head that he is the only person who can understand and solve a mathematical problem.
>>
>>
>> You sound jealous. You don't have to be the only one.
>I am! Life is so unfair that I can't do mathematics like Barbie. What's that acronym that you computer experts use? Oh yea, LOL.

Actually, that acronyn is most commonly used among trolls, ass.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 6:45:04 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 11:02:03 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> wrote:
>
> >On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 10:40:02 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> >> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:49:48 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 7:25:04 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> >> >> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >> >> >
> >> >> [snip]
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Come off it! You show no sign of having read ANY of the other
> >> >> > articles in that issue, nor of knowing what EES is all about.
> >> >> >
> >> >> What exactly are the selling points of EES that make it an attractive
> >> >> alternative to the MS? Does it go any further than your proclivity for
> >> >> taking in strays (eg- directed panspermy) and nurturing them as you always
> >> >> do? The evodevo stuff stands on its own and represents an outright
> >> >> opportunistic co-option by the EES crowd. Niche construction sounds
> >> >> interesting and in the case of a beaver dam or animal husbandry and
> >> >> subsequent dairying of humans (blessed are the cheesemakers) just something
> >> >> already known renamed. But the epigenetics part seems too much force-fed
> >> >> Lamarckian hogwash that relies on effects that are at best ephemeral and
> >> >> not a challenge to MS.
> >> >>
> >> >> Are you collecting stuff you think challenges evolutionary orthodoxy?
> >> >
> >> >Peter has gotten into his head that he is the only person who can understand and solve a mathematical problem.
> >>
> >>
> >> You sound jealous. You don't have to be the only one.
> >I am! Life is so unfair that I can't do mathematics like Barbie. What's that acronym that you computer experts use? Oh yea, LOL.
>
>
> Actually, that acronyn is most commonly used among trolls, ass.

IMHO I should have said LMAO or perhaps ROFL or even ROFLMAO when you said I was jealous of Peter's mathematical skills. But you being ITK about mathematics are OTP with Peter. Now you being one of the reptiles grow feathers PPL need to LMK ICYMI have no mathematical or empirical basis for your beliefs and are NSFL. OAN, IRL, you should MYOB and stop teaching naive school children your mathematically irrational beliefs IE, reptiles grow feathers. I'd be HTH if you ever do have a scientific basis for your beliefs and DFTBA. GTG, HAND, HANL, and MTFBWY, Barbie.

[jillery]

You must enjoy proving me right, you do it so often, ass.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 7:25:04 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Jan 2018 06:44:58 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

Whatever

[Bob Casanova]

On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:49:48 -0800 (PST), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net>:

>Peter has gotten into his head that he is the only person who can understand and solve a mathematical problem.

IronyMeter smoking *severely*...
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[jillery]

You took the word right out of my mouth.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 9:50:04 AM UTC-8, Bob Casanova wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:49:48 -0800 (PST), the following
> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> :
>
> >Peter has gotten into his head that he is the only person who can understand and solve a mathematical problem.
>
> IronyMeter smoking *severely*...

You certainly haven't demonstrated any skill in solving a mathematical problem. You only provide low illumination. TOE smoking severely.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 10:15:05 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Jan 2018 08:02:01 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

So what happened to all the biologists who know how to do a probability problem. Perhaps you can find evidence of them in the fossil record? Actually, I think they found one. They named it BiologusMathematicianAbiitExtincti. It had hair like structures growing out of its chin, they think they were precursors to feathers.

[*Hemidactylus*]

A sudden onset of glossolalia. Are you having a seizure?

[jillery]

On Sat, 27 Jan 2018 10:50:39 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net> wrote:

>So what happened to all the biologists who know how to do a probability problem.

Ask them.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

In brief, I'm only seizing on the facts.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 27 Jan 2018 10:40:53 -0800 (PST), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD

<klei...@sti.net>:

>On Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 9:50:04 AM UTC-8, Bob Casanova wrote:
>> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:49:48 -0800 (PST), the following
>> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> :
>>
>> >Peter has gotten into his head that he is the only person who can understand and solve a mathematical problem.
>>
>> IronyMeter smoking *severely*...

>You certainly haven't demonstrated any skill in solving a mathematical problem.

Whooosh...

> You only provide low illumination.

As contrasted with your "none at all"? I'll take that.

>TOE smoking severely.

Try an Ace bandage, and stop kicking yourself in the ass in
the future.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 27 Jan 2018 10:50:39 -0800 (PST), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net>:

They got tired of trying to educate you and dropped out in
disgust?

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 9:45:04 AM UTC-8, Bob Casanova wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Jan 2018 10:40:53 -0800 (PST), the following
> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> :
>
> >On Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 9:50:04 AM UTC-8, Bob Casanova wrote:
> >> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:49:48 -0800 (PST), the following
> >> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> >> :
> >>
> >> >Peter has gotten into his head that he is the only person who can understand and solve a mathematical problem.
> >>
> >> IronyMeter smoking *severely*...
>
> >You certainly haven't demonstrated any skill in solving a mathematical problem.
>
> Whooosh...

Bill Rogers makes that same silly response when he has nothing intelligent to say. At least you aren't taking this response from Bugs Bunny.

>
> > You only provide low illumination.
>
> As contrasted with your "none at all"? I'll take that.

You don't have the capability to see this wavelength. You didn't do your homework in your two statistics classes.

>
> >TOE smoking severely.
>
> Try an Ace bandage, and stop kicking yourself in the ass in
> the future.

So that's how you practice medicine. You put an Ace bandage on a massive hemorrhage.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 9:45:04 AM UTC-8, Bob Casanova wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Jan 2018 10:50:39 -0800 (PST), the following
> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD

I would get tired too if I had to prove that reptile grows feathers with an ArchieDumbtrex fossil. And then try to argue that combination therapy for hiv is not an example of rmns. Only those who don't care how dumb they look continue to argue that the mathematics I've presented is wrong. I've already shown Bill Rogers has been wrong at least four times. Once when he incorrectly argued that the size of his study had no impact on the probability of resistance occurring, once when he incorrectly argued that competition accelerates evolution, once when he argued that recombination accelerates rmns and most recently when he makes the blunder that the mathematics of survival of the fittest governs the evolution of drug resistance. Bill will never admit he is wrong, he thinks he knows everything. Bill now sits in the peanut gallery. rsnorman admitted my mathematics was correct for medical examples of rmns but denies that it applies to all other examples of rmns but never posted any proof. Do you think Peter is going to do any better? I think somebody like Peter taught you statistics. Your TOE is a bloody corpse that you think an Ace wrap will bring it back to life.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 12:50:03 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 7:25:04 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> > Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > >
> > [snip]
> > >
> > > Come off it! You show no sign of having read ANY of the other
> > > articles in that issue, nor of knowing what EES is all about.
> > >
> > What exactly are the selling points of EES that make it an attractive
> > alternative to the MS? Does it go any further than your proclivity for
> > taking in strays (eg- directed panspermy) and nurturing them as you always
> > do? The evodevo stuff stands on its own and represents an outright
> > opportunistic co-option by the EES crowd. Niche construction sounds
> > interesting and in the case of a beaver dam or animal husbandry and
> > subsequent dairying of humans (blessed are the cheesemakers) just something
> > already known renamed. But the epigenetics part seems too much force-fed
> > Lamarckian hogwash that relies on effects that are at best ephemeral and
> > not a challenge to MS.
> >
> > Are you collecting stuff you think challenges evolutionary orthodoxy?

Are you cozying up to Hemidactylus by not challenging anything
he wrote up there, and joining him in making false accusations about me?

Here you go already:

> Peter has gotten into his head that he is the only person who can understand and solve a mathematical problem.

A grotesquely false, and blatantly self-serving claim about me
from someone who cannot even understand the meaning of "independent"
in mathematical probability theory.

Anyone deserving to have a doctorate in mathematics can solve
mathematical problems, lots of them. Even where talk.origins
is concerned, there are many who can solve simple MATHEMATICAL
problems like the VERY few that you have actually posed.

> And biologists show the same kind of arrogance by claiming only they can understand a biological phenomenon.

Some do, including Harshman, but the whole sorry bunch was accused of
"intellectual snobbery" by ichthyologist J. L. B. Smith, discoverer
of the living coelacanth, *Latimeria*.

Another type of intellectual snobbery
is the dictum that science has now
passed beyond the understanding of the
ordinary man. That, however, is very
largely a matter of presentation.
With the possible exception of higher
mathematics, there is not a single
branch of science whose broad outlines
the ordinary man cannot appreciate if
it is properly explained to him.
--J.L.B. Smith, _The Search
Beneath the Sea_, Henry Holt
and Company, 1956, p. 44

> I suspect Muller wrote his essay on EES because population genetics does not support the concept of common descent

Not sufficiently, anyway.

> and was looking for some other way to justifying the TOE.

Not the embryonic Theory of Evolution, but the FACT of common
descent of all eumetazoans and much, much more.

If you deny this much common descent, then you've painted yourself into
the corner of implicitly claiming the God poofed whole animals
(eumetazoans) into existence. You desperately tried to avoid
being squeezed into this very corner by evasive tactics.

Some were even insincere, like your claim that it was
"silly" of me to ask whether you believed this "poofed" doctrine
or merely that God helped this much common descent along
by producing mutations to steer it along.

> And what I mean by the concept of common descent, the primordial soup replicator to today's life forms.

You are trying to make life in talk.origins a lot easier for you
than you deserve. You have ridiculed the concept of common descent
of birds and reptiles, and have implicitly painted yourself into
the corner described up there.


Are you surprised that I am the only person on this thread
who points this out? You shouldn't be: the people who have replied
to you on this thread since you made this post are, if anything,
more antagonistic towards me than towards you.

And so they are all too happy to leave everything longer than
sound bites up to me, so that they (and you) can go on pretending
that I ought to be able to refute you with very short replies.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 3:00:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 11:00:03 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> > Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 6:45:04 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> > >> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 11:02:03 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> > >> wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 10:40:02 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> > >>>> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:49:48 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> > >>>> wrote:

[to Hemidactylus, in an exchange with which I dealt in another
post a few minutes ago:]

> > >>>>> Peter has gotten into his head that he is the only person who can
> > >>>>> understand and solve a mathematical problem.
> > >>>>
> > >>>>
> > >>>> You sound jealous. You don't have to be the only one.

I think jillery read accurately between the lines of what you
wrote. Self-righteous, self-centered person that you are, you
were probably acting in a

"le whole class of persons, c'est moi"

mode. IOW, you assume that because (you THINK) you know more
about mathematical probability than I do, that
you can solve problems in it as well as, or better than, I can.

But you showed how wrong you were by showing that you
do not understand the concept of "independent" in
mathematical probability theory.

> > >>> I am! Life is so unfair that I can't do mathematics like Barbie. What's
> > >>> that acronym that you computer experts use? Oh yea, LOL.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Actually, that acronyn is most commonly used among trolls, ass.

> > > IMHO I should have said LMAO or perhaps ROFL or even ROFLMAO when you
> > > said I was jealous of Peter's mathematical skills. But you being ITK
> > > about mathematics are OTP with Peter. Now you being one of the reptiles
> > > grow feathers PPL need to LMK ICYMI have no mathematical or empirical
> > > basis for your beliefs and are NSFL. OAN, IRL, you should MYOB and stop
> > > teaching naive school children your mathematically irrational beliefs IE,
> > > reptiles grow feathers. I'd be HTH if you ever do have a scientific basis
> > > for your beliefs and DFTBA. GTG, HAND, HANL, and MTFBWY, Barbie.

> > A sudden onset of glossolalia. Are you having a seizure?

> In brief, I'm only seizing on the facts.

No, you are not. You have not shown that anyone has claimed reptiles
grow feathers. You *specifically* accused jillery of being "one of the
reptiles grow feathers PPL." up there, but fail to quote anything
from her to that effect.


I don't know what ITK and OTP stand for, but it's obvious that you want
people to think jillery is almost as good as mathematics as I am

when you write:

"But you being ITK about mathematics are OTP with Peter."

But I think you will fail, because most people here will recognize
that statement as just more of your self-centered posturing about
how great you (THINK you) are in mathematics.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of So. Carolina in Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 6:55:03 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 12:50:03 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 7:25:04 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> > > Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > >
> > > [snip]
> > > >
> > > > Come off it! You show no sign of having read ANY of the other
> > > > articles in that issue, nor of knowing what EES is all about.
> > > >
> > > What exactly are the selling points of EES that make it an attractive
> > > alternative to the MS? Does it go any further than your proclivity for
> > > taking in strays (eg- directed panspermy) and nurturing them as you always
> > > do? The evodevo stuff stands on its own and represents an outright
> > > opportunistic co-option by the EES crowd. Niche construction sounds
> > > interesting and in the case of a beaver dam or animal husbandry and
> > > subsequent dairying of humans (blessed are the cheesemakers) just something
> > > already known renamed. But the epigenetics part seems too much force-fed
> > > Lamarckian hogwash that relies on effects that are at best ephemeral and
> > > not a challenge to MS.
> > >
> > > Are you collecting stuff you think challenges evolutionary orthodoxy?
>
> Are you cozying up to Hemidactylus by not challenging anything
> he wrote up there, and joining him in making false accusations about me?

Why should I? You are the one claiming that EES is the new model of the MS lemon.

>
> Here you go already:
>
> > Peter has gotten into his head that he is the only person who can understand and solve a mathematical problem.
>
> A grotesquely false, and blatantly self-serving claim about me
> from someone who cannot even understand the meaning of "independent"
> in mathematical probability theory.

Since you don't have a good understanding of probability theory, let's try to present to you the rmns problem in terms of topology.
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/34/13711.full
In particular, consider figure 5 which shows the difference in the population optimizing to combined selection pressures vs single sequential selection pressures on their fitness landscape.

>
> Anyone deserving to have a doctorate in mathematics can solve
> mathematical problems, lots of them. Even where talk.origins
> is concerned, there are many who can solve simple MATHEMATICAL
> problems like the VERY few that you have actually posed.

But you should know well that there are many different subjects in mathematics. And mastery of one area of mathematics does not imply mastery of a different area of mathematics.

>
> > And biologists show the same kind of arrogance by claiming only they can understand a biological phenomenon.
>
> Some do, including Harshman, but the whole sorry bunch was accused of
> "intellectual snobbery" by ichthyologist J. L. B. Smith, discoverer
> of the living coelacanth, *Latimeria*.
>
> Another type of intellectual snobbery
> is the dictum that science has now
> passed beyond the understanding of the
> ordinary man. That, however, is very
> largely a matter of presentation.
> With the possible exception of higher
> mathematics, there is not a single
> branch of science whose broad outlines
> the ordinary man cannot appreciate if
> it is properly explained to him.
> --J.L.B. Smith, _The Search
> Beneath the Sea_, Henry Holt
> and Company, 1956, p. 44
>
>

Sometimes, understanding of a scientific problem requires looking at the problem from a different perspective. In engineering, we were given coursework in design where we were specifically trained to be aware of this problem, that is getting locked into a particular design. In some cases, it requires an outsider without the same biases as the insiders to solve the problem.

> > I suspect Muller wrote his essay on EES because population genetics does not support the concept of common descent
>
> Not sufficiently, anyway.

Population genetics contradicts the concept of common descent.

>
>
> > and was looking for some other way to justifying the TOE.
>
> Not the embryonic Theory of Evolution, but the FACT of common
> descent of all eumetazoans and much, much more.

I'm looking at the problem from a much more fundamental level, that is how does rmns create new alleles to adapt to selection conditions. The idea that natural selection can transform single-cell organisms into eumetazoa at best can be called rank speculation.

>
> If you deny this much common descent, then you've painted yourself into
> the corner of implicitly claiming the God poofed whole animals
> (eumetazoans) into existence. You desperately tried to avoid
> being squeezed into this very corner by evasive tactics.

Everybody here knows I'm a Creationist. How the Creator "poofed" whole animals into existence, I can't explain. What I can tell you with mathematical certainty is that rmns didn't do it.

>
> Some were even insincere, like your claim that it was
> "silly" of me to ask whether you believed this "poofed" doctrine
> or merely that God helped this much common descent along
> by producing mutations to steer it along.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the mechanisms of genetic transformation, when properly understood, contradict any notion of the TOE being a valid scientific theory. And this failure on the part of biologists to correctly elucidate how these mechanisms operate has harmed and continues to harm people.

>
>
> > And what I mean by the concept of common descent, the primordial soup replicator to today's life forms.
>
> You are trying to make life in talk.origins a lot easier for you
> than you deserve. You have ridiculed the concept of common descent
> of birds and reptiles, and have implicitly painted yourself into
> the corner described up there.

The only thing I've painted is how rmns works on a lineage. And that lineage represents the limits of the concept of common descent.

>
>
> Are you surprised that I am the only person on this thread
> who points this out? You shouldn't be: the people who have replied
> to you on this thread since you made this post are, if anything,
> more antagonistic towards me than towards you.

I don't know about you but I've learned something about evolution from the people I've debated here. I don't mind my ideas being challenged, it forces me to think about them. I think a lot of the antagonism arises from frustration, they think they are correct, I think I'm correct, present your logic and empirical evidence and make your case. Evolution is not a simple topic and the advocates of the TOE who takes the approach recommended by Dawkins to treat those with derision who don't believe their doctrine do a disservice to scientific understanding and research.

>
> And so they are all too happy to leave everything longer than
> sound bites up to me, so that they (and you) can go on pretending
> that I ought to be able to refute you with very short replies.

I expect more than verbosity from a mathematician. You write papers on topology. Try to frame rmns as a problem in topology. I've given you an example of this with "Varying environments can speed up evolution" paper. It might help you understand the probability calculation which I've presented.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 7:25:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 3:00:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > On Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 11:00:03 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> > > Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 6:45:04 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> > > >> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 11:02:03 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> > > >> wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >>> On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 10:40:02 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> > > >>>> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:49:48 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> > > >>>> wrote:
>
> [to Hemidactylus, in an exchange with which I dealt in another
> post a few minutes ago:]
>
>
> > > >>>>> Peter has gotten into his head that he is the only person who can
> > > >>>>> understand and solve a mathematical problem.
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> You sound jealous. You don't have to be the only one.
>
>
> I think jillery read accurately between the lines of what you
> wrote. Self-righteous, self-centered person that you are, you
> were probably acting in a
>
> "le whole class of persons, c'est moi"
>
> mode. IOW, you assume that because (you THINK) you know more
> about mathematical probability than I do, that
> you can solve problems in it as well as, or better than, I can.

I certainly know more about rmns than you do. But that's not hard because you don't have a good understanding of probability theory. Perhaps if we reformulate the problems as a problem in topology, you will get the point.

>
> But you showed how wrong you were by showing that you
> do not understand the concept of "independent" in
> mathematical probability theory.

You should tell the peer reviewers who published my papers. They are experts in probability theory and you are not.

>
>
> > > >>> I am! Life is so unfair that I can't do mathematics like Barbie. What's
> > > >>> that acronym that you computer experts use? Oh yea, LOL.
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >> Actually, that acronyn is most commonly used among trolls, ass.
>
> > > > IMHO I should have said LMAO or perhaps ROFL or even ROFLMAO when you
> > > > said I was jealous of Peter's mathematical skills. But you being ITK
> > > > about mathematics are OTP with Peter. Now you being one of the reptiles
> > > > grow feathers PPL need to LMK ICYMI have no mathematical or empirical
> > > > basis for your beliefs and are NSFL. OAN, IRL, you should MYOB and stop
> > > > teaching naive school children your mathematically irrational beliefs IE,
> > > > reptiles grow feathers. I'd be HTH if you ever do have a scientific basis
> > > > for your beliefs and DFTBA. GTG, HAND, HANL, and MTFBWY, Barbie.
>
> > > A sudden onset of glossolalia. Are you having a seizure?
>
> > In brief, I'm only seizing on the facts.
>
> No, you are not. You have not shown that anyone has claimed reptiles
> grow feathers. You *specifically* accused jillery of being "one of the
> reptiles grow feathers PPL." up there, but fail to quote anything
> from her to that effect.

Would it make you feel better if instead of reptiles grows feathers PPL, I called these PPL the non-feather growing replicators grows feathers PPL?

>
>
> I don't know what ITK and OTP stand for, but it's obvious that you want
> people to think jillery is almost as good as mathematics as I am
> when you write:
>
> "But you being ITK about mathematics are OTP with Peter."

If you were in the know you would understand it.

>
> But I think you will fail, because most people here will recognize
> that statement as just more of your self-centered posturing about
> how great you (THINK you) are in mathematics.

I've done a good job on the mathematics of rmns. You've yet to recognize it because you are not very good at probability theory. But perhaps if you formulate the problem as one in topology, you will get the point.

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 06:24:52 -0800 (PST), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD

<klei...@sti.net>:

>On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 9:45:04 AM UTC-8, Bob Casanova wrote:
>> On Sat, 27 Jan 2018 10:40:53 -0800 (PST), the following
>> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> :
>>
>> >On Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 9:50:04 AM UTC-8, Bob Casanova wrote:
>> >> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:49:48 -0800 (PST), the following
>> >> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> >> :
>> >>
>> >> >Peter has gotten into his head that he is the only person who can understand and solve a mathematical problem.
>> >>
>> >> IronyMeter smoking *severely*...
>>
>> >You certainly haven't demonstrated any skill in solving a mathematical problem.
>>
>> Whooosh...

>Bill Rogers makes that same silly response when he has nothing intelligent to say.

Perhaps you should consider its meaning in context...for
both of us.

> At least you aren't taking this response from Bugs Bunny.
>>
>> > You only provide low illumination.
>>
>> As contrasted with your "none at all"? I'll take that.

>You don't have the capability to see this wavelength.

Microvolt DC? If even that? No, I confess I don't.

> You didn't do your homework in your two statistics classes.
>>
>> >TOE smoking severely.
>>
>> Try an Ace bandage, and stop kicking yourself in the ass in
>> the future.

>So that's how you practice medicine. You put an Ace bandage on a massive hemorrhage.

It's your hemorrhage; do whatever you wish. But I thought
your toe was only "smoking"? Doesn't sound very bloody to
me. Bloody stupid, yes.

HAND, Allie.

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 06:40:44 -0800 (PST), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD

<klei...@sti.net>:

>I would get tired too if I had to prove that reptile grows feathers...

....to some moron who rejects the evidence because it doesn't
fit his religious bias, and is thus blind to reality...

>... with an ArchieDumbtrex fossil. And then try to argue that combination therapy for hiv is not an example of rmns. Only those who don't care how dumb they look continue to argue that the mathematics I've presented is wrong. I've already shown Bill Rogers has been wrong at least four times. Once when he incorrectly argued that the size of his study had no impact on the probability of resistance occurring, once when he incorrectly argued that competition accelerates evolution, once when he argued that recombination accelerates rmns and most recently when he makes the blunder that the mathematics of survival of the fittest governs the evolution of drug resistance. Bill will never admit he is wrong, he thinks he knows everything. Bill now sits in the peanut gallery. rsnorman admitted my mathematics was correct for medical examples of rmns but denies that it applies to all other examples of rmns but never posted any proof.

>Do you think Peter is going to do any better? I think somebody like Peter taught you statistics. Your TOE is a bloody corpse that you think an Ace wrap will bring it back to life.

Ooooh, a *long* rant! Don't get your panties in a twist,
Allie; it's not good for your smoking toe to dance around
due to the wedgie.

[jillery]

As usual, GIYF. From Urban Dictionary:

ITK: "In The Know" - being savvy about a topic.

OTP: "One True Pairing", a perfect pairing between two fictional
characters.

Not sure that "fictional" is a necessary attribute.

>But I think you will fail, because most people here will recognize
>that statement as just more of your self-centered posturing about
>how great you (THINK you) are in mathematics.

FTR (look it up), regular posters know I don't claim any particular
expertise about any topic. That's because almost all of the arguments
posted in T.O. don't require academic bona fides, or any particular
expertise, to understand and/or refute them, making both superfluous.
Instead, what's necessary is an ability to construct a coherent
argument, a willingness to question one's own assumptions, and an
interest in learning, which implies a readiness to look things up. Not
sure why these attributes aren't demonstrated more often.

In this particular case, replies from the good DrDr almost immediately
devolve into his self-righteous, self-centered non sequitur spam, as
you noted above.

I leave as a exercise what is the more appropriate OTP here.

>Peter Nyikos
>Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
>U. of So. Carolina in Columbia
>http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 10:25:03 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> FTR (look it up), regular posters know I don't claim any particular
> expertise about any topic.

Well said Barbie. Between you and Bobby's failure to get anything out of his two courses in statistics, meet the qualifications as believers in reptiles grow feathers dogma.

[jillery]

I note your incoherent non sequitur spam, ass.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 12:30:04 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 11:15:40 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> wrote:
>
> >On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 10:25:03 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> >> FTR (look it up), regular posters know I don't claim any particular
> >> expertise about any topic.
> >Well said Barbie. Between you and Bobby's failure to get anything out of his two courses in statistics, meet the qualifications as believers in reptiles grow feathers dogma.
>
>
> I note your incoherent non sequitur spam, ass.

I note your mathematical incompetence for which you rightly acknowledge your lack of expertise. So what has happened to all your biologists with knowledge of probability theory? Did they go extinct?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 11:20:05 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 7:25:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 3:00:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > On Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 11:00:03 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> > > > Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > > On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 6:45:04 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> > > > >> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 11:02:03 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> > > > >> wrote:
> > > > >>
> > > > >>> On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 10:40:02 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> > > > >>>> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:49:48 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> > > > >>>> wrote:
> >
> > [to Hemidactylus, in an exchange with which I dealt in another
> > post a few minutes ago:]
> >
> >
> > > > >>>>> Peter has gotten into his head that he is the only person who can
> > > > >>>>> understand and solve a mathematical problem.
> > > > >>>>
> > > > >>>>
> > > > >>>> You sound jealous. You don't have to be the only one.
> >
> >
> > I think jillery read accurately between the lines of what you
> > wrote. Self-righteous, self-centered person that you are, you
> > were probably acting in a
> >
> > "le whole class of persons, c'est moi"
> >
> > mode. IOW, you assume that because (you THINK) you know more
> > about mathematical probability than I do, that
> > you can solve problems in it as well as, or better than, I can.

> I certainly know more about rmns than you do.

You have no way of knowing that before I evaluate the paper you
e-mailed me. And the longer you make unjustified claims like
the above, the longer you will have to wait until I do evaluate it.

> But that's not hard because you don't have a good understanding of probability theory.

The word "theory" makes this claim utterly false. I know a lot more
about *mathematical* probability theory than you do [you don't even
know the meaning of the word "independent" as used there], and what
you have displayed is a homespun understanding of INFORMAL expressions
in applied probability theory.

You are so informal, you give the same meaning to "random", "independent,"
and "random independent," and that meaning is inchoate.

> Perhaps if we reformulate the problems as a problem in topology, you will get the point.

Dream on, you amateur.

> > But you showed how wrong you were by showing that you
> > do not understand the concept of "independent" in
> > mathematical probability theory.

> You should tell the peer reviewers who published my papers.

I would love to do that. How can I get in touch with them?

That's almost a trick question: if that was a respectable journal,
you have no idea who they are. But if you give me the e-mail
address of the editor to whom you submitted the paper, that
would be a good start.

> They are experts in probability theory and you are not.

You have no way of knowing what KIND of probability theory
they are good at. Chances are they were NOT chosen for
the knowledge of *mathematical* probability theory, the
only form that has been put on a completely secure foundation.

> >
> >
> > > > >>> I am! Life is so unfair that I can't do mathematics like Barbie. What's
> > > > >>> that acronym that you computer experts use? Oh yea, LOL.
> > > > >>
> > > > >>
> > > > >> Actually, that acronyn is most commonly used among trolls, ass.
> >
> > > > > IMHO I should have said LMAO or perhaps ROFL or even ROFLMAO when you
> > > > > said I was jealous of Peter's mathematical skills. But you being ITK
> > > > > about mathematics are OTP with Peter. Now you being one of the reptiles
> > > > > grow feathers PPL need to LMK ICYMI have no mathematical or empirical
> > > > > basis for your beliefs and are NSFL. OAN, IRL, you should MYOB and stop
> > > > > teaching naive school children your mathematically irrational beliefs IE,
> > > > > reptiles grow feathers. I'd be HTH if you ever do have a scientific basis
> > > > > for your beliefs and DFTBA. GTG, HAND, HANL, and MTFBWY, Barbie.
> >
> > > > A sudden onset of glossolalia. Are you having a seizure?
> >
> > > In brief, I'm only seizing on the facts.
> >
> > No, you are not. You have not shown that anyone has claimed reptiles
> > grow feathers. You *specifically* accused jillery of being "one of the
> > reptiles grow feathers PPL." up there, but fail to quote anything
> > from her to that effect.

> Would it make you feel better if instead of reptiles grows feathers PPL, I called these PPL the non-feather growing replicators grows feathers PPL?

Don't be daft. That's a self-contradictory "concept" and thus
a demonstrable straw man.

And you ducked the challenge like a quack. Your question should have
been accompanied by a quote supporting your new insult, or the
old one, but you seem just to be stalling until the posts grow
so long that Erik Simpson will once again flame me for not being
succinct.

> >
> > I don't know what ITK and OTP stand for, but it's obvious that you want
> > people to think jillery is almost as good as mathematics as I am
> > when you write:
> >
> > "But you being ITK about mathematics are OTP with Peter."

> If you were in the know you would understand it.

Why don't you go the whole hog and chant, "I know something
you don't know! I know something you don't know!" like
a six year old?

> > But I think you will fail, because most people here will recognize
> > that statement as just more of your self-centered posturing about
> > how great you (THINK you) are in mathematics.

> I've done a good job on the mathematics of rmns.

Maybe so, but you've done a lousy job of trying to show that they
refute common descent of animals (unless one brings divine intervention
into the mutation process, which you evidently do NOT want to do).

> You've yet to recognize it because

...I have not yet read your paper. And maybe you are lucky that
I have not read it yet.

> you are not very good at probability theory.

If you are trying to shame me into reading it on YOUR timetable
by making unsupportable insults like this, you are a simpleton
with such little understanding of human nature that you probably
should be barred from interacting with patients.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of So. Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

Don't bother trying to evaluate the papers. I doubt you have the skill to understand them.

>
>
> > But that's not hard because you don't have a good understanding of probability theory.
>
> The word "theory" makes this claim utterly false. I know a lot more
> about *mathematical* probability theory than you do [you don't even
> know the meaning of the word "independent" as used there], and what
> you have displayed is a homespun understanding of INFORMAL expressions
> in applied probability theory.

Whatever. So how many papers have you written on rmns? You must write them on vapor paper. They are nowhere to be seen.

>
> You are so informal, you give the same meaning to "random", "independent,"
> and "random independent," and that meaning is inchoate.

Is that so?

>
>
>
> > Perhaps if we reformulate the problems as a problem in topology, you will get the point.
>
> Dream on, you amateur.

You certainly don't understand rmns based on the principles of probability theory. I'm trying to make the problem easy enough so even you could understand it. So who has been tutoring you in probability theory? John Harshman? He knows a lot about the addition rule. In fact, that is the only rule he knows.

>
>
> > > But you showed how wrong you were by showing that you
> > > do not understand the concept of "independent" in
> > > mathematical probability theory.
>
> > You should tell the peer reviewers who published my papers.
>
> I would love to do that. How can I get in touch with them?

It's easy, contact the editors of the journal which published my papers. Better yet, you can get the names of the reviewers of the layman's abstract that I wrote at the request of the editor. You can find their names here:
http://www.statisticsviews.com/details/news/10604248/Laymans-abstract-Random-mutation-and-natural-selection-a-predictable-phenomenon.html
The reviewers are listed at the bottom of the web page. You should read that web page, it's aimed a people with your level of understanding of probability theory.

>
> That's almost a trick question: if that was a respectable journal,
> you have no idea who they are. But if you give me the e-mail
> address of the editor to whom you submitted the paper, that
> would be a good start.

A mathematician with your level of skill can't figure that out? No wonder you don't understand probability theory.

>
> > They are experts in probability theory and you are not.
>
> You have no way of knowing what KIND of probability theory
> they are good at. Chances are they were NOT chosen for
> the knowledge of *mathematical* probability theory, the
> only form that has been put on a completely secure foundation.

That's the funny thing about the mathematics of rmns. All you have to understand in the binomial distribution. This is an introductory level problem in probability theory but you haven't demonstrated that level of understanding.

>
> > >
> > >
> > > > > >>> I am! Life is so unfair that I can't do mathematics like Barbie. What's
> > > > > >>> that acronym that you computer experts use? Oh yea, LOL.
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> Actually, that acronyn is most commonly used among trolls, ass.
> > >
> > > > > > IMHO I should have said LMAO or perhaps ROFL or even ROFLMAO when you
> > > > > > said I was jealous of Peter's mathematical skills. But you being ITK
> > > > > > about mathematics are OTP with Peter. Now you being one of the reptiles
> > > > > > grow feathers PPL need to LMK ICYMI have no mathematical or empirical
> > > > > > basis for your beliefs and are NSFL. OAN, IRL, you should MYOB and stop
> > > > > > teaching naive school children your mathematically irrational beliefs IE,
> > > > > > reptiles grow feathers. I'd be HTH if you ever do have a scientific basis
> > > > > > for your beliefs and DFTBA. GTG, HAND, HANL, and MTFBWY, Barbie.
> > >
> > > > > A sudden onset of glossolalia. Are you having a seizure?
> > >
> > > > In brief, I'm only seizing on the facts.
> > >
> > > No, you are not. You have not shown that anyone has claimed reptiles
> > > grow feathers. You *specifically* accused jillery of being "one of the
> > > reptiles grow feathers PPL." up there, but fail to quote anything
> > > from her to that effect.
>
> > Would it make you feel better if instead of reptiles grows feathers PPL, I called these PPL the non-feather growing replicators grows feathers PPL?
>
> Don't be daft. That's a self-contradictory "concept" and thus
> a demonstrable straw man.

That's what so stupid about the theory of evolution. Mathematics contradicts this theory.

>
> And you ducked the challenge like a quack. Your question should have
> been accompanied by a quote supporting your new insult, or the
> old one, but you seem just to be stalling until the posts grow
> so long that Erik Simpson will once again flame me for not being
> succinct.

I think Bart Simpson's dumber brother expected you to find some error in my math or the physics. Smarter people than you have already studied my work and published it. I have another paper in review right now, it's on the difference between rmns in competitive and non-competitive environments. Of course, you know how the mathematics differs between the two circumstances. Do you want to explain it to us?

>
> > >
> > > I don't know what ITK and OTP stand for, but it's obvious that you want
> > > people to think jillery is almost as good as mathematics as I am
> > > when you write:
> > >
> > > "But you being ITK about mathematics are OTP with Peter."
>
> > If you were in the know you would understand it.
>
> Why don't you go the whole hog and chant, "I know something
> you don't know! I know something you don't know!" like
> a six year old?

That's too mature a level for you. You operate on the cry-baby level.

>
>
> > > But I think you will fail, because most people here will recognize
> > > that statement as just more of your self-centered posturing about
> > > how great you (THINK you) are in mathematics.
>
> > I've done a good job on the mathematics of rmns.
>
> Maybe so, but you've done a lousy job of trying to show that they
> refute common descent of animals (unless one brings divine intervention
> into the mutation process, which you evidently do NOT want to do).

How many genes does it take to produce feathers?

>
>
> > You've yet to recognize it because
>
> ...I have not yet read your paper. And maybe you are lucky that
> I have not read it yet.

Why? Do you think you will find an error in the physics or math? You really need to lay off the Ouzo.

>
>
> > you are not very good at probability theory.
>
> If you are trying to shame me into reading it on YOUR timetable
> by making unsupportable insults like this, you are a simpleton
> with such little understanding of human nature that you probably
> should be barred from interacting with patients.

Your nature is easy to understand, you are a crybaby. Now take your medicine like a good little boy and we'll give you a sticker.

[jillery]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 12:36:23 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net> wrote:

>On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 12:30:04 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 11:15:40 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> wrote:
>>
>> >On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 10:25:03 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> >> FTR (look it up), regular posters know I don't claim any particular
>> >> expertise about any topic.
>> >Well said Barbie. Between you and Bobby's failure to get anything out of his two courses in statistics, meet the qualifications as believers in reptiles grow feathers dogma.
>>
>>
>> I note your incoherent non sequitur spam, ass.
>I note your mathematical incompetence for which you rightly acknowledge your lack of expertise.

Of course, not claiming any expertise is very different from
acknowledging lack of expertise. Your statement above is an
illustration of stupidity you share with your OTP.

And since there's no mathematics here to note, your comment above is
an obvious lie, what you post when you have no idea what you're
talking about and have nothing intelligent to say.

>So what has happened to all your biologists with knowledge of probability theory? Did they go extinct?

I'm supposed to have biologists?

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 6:30:02 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 12:36:23 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> wrote:
>
> >On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 12:30:04 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> >> On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 11:15:40 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 10:25:03 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> >> >> FTR (look it up), regular posters know I don't claim any particular
> >> >> expertise about any topic.
> >> >Well said Barbie. Between you and Bobby's failure to get anything out of his two courses in statistics, meet the qualifications as believers in reptiles grow feathers dogma.
> >>
> >>
> >> I note your incoherent non sequitur spam, ass.
> >I note your mathematical incompetence for which you rightly acknowledge your lack of expertise.
>
>
> Of course, not claiming any expertise is very different from
> acknowledging lack of expertise. Your statement above is an
> illustration of stupidity you share with your OTP.

So what is your area of expertise? And why don't you tell us exactly what I share with my so-called OTP? I think you share much more with Peter than I do. You and Peter use 19th-century science, geometry, and a yard-stick to try to determine relatedness when 21-century science determines relatedness on a molecular level. You do know that DNA exists and you get that DNA from your parents.

>
> And since there's no mathematics here to note, your comment above is
> an obvious lie, what you post when you have no idea what you're
> talking about and have nothing intelligent to say.

I have nothing intelligent to say that you would understand. You have to understand introductory probability theory and you don't Barbie.

>
>
> >So what has happened to all your biologists with knowledge of probability theory? Did they go extinct?
>
>
> I'm supposed to have biologists?

None which understand probability theory and how it applies to rmns.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 5:30:05 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 1:40:04 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 9:40:04 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 4:55:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 2:55:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > > On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 10:40:03 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:55:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 12:50:05 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 7:40:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 10:10:06 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Improving fitness is a different physical phenomenon governed by different mathematical principles.
> > > > > > > > > You won't find the mathematics of improved fitness in any population genetics texts at this time.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > What about published papers? Are you sure you've adequately surveyed
> > > > > > > > them? Have you been over the ones referenced by Muller?
> > > >
> > > > Kleinman, you ducked these questions, yet on the new thread you
> > > > accused Muller of ignorance of how fitness works, without even
> > > > hinting about how he allegedly showed it, let alone trying
> > > > to document it.
> > > >
> > > > Should ANYBODY be surprised by ANY of this?
> >
> > > There are actually two ways to measure fitness. The traditional way consists of measuring fitness by the (change in) relative frequency of a variant in a population. This works well when doing the mathematics of survival of the fittest.

>But surprise, you can also measure fitness by the absolute fitness to reproduce, the number of replications a particular variant can do.

"Fitness" is defined in MP as the number of offspring that
survive to reproduce. How many generations down the line do you stop
at when you measure what you call absolute fitness?


> This is the way you have to measure fitness if you want to do the mathematics of improving fitness.

Improving absolute fitness, or improving differential fitness?

And if the latter, how can you be sure that there haven't been
papers that incorporate the concept of "absolute fitness" under
a different name, in the process of analyzing differential fitness?

> >
> > > Muller only considers differential fitness to reproduce, the former measure.

> > You have yet to quote the place where he does that.

I was misled by the word "considers" here. He only MENTIONS it in a brief
paragraph where he outlines the strengths and weaknesses of MS.

> I did and you snipped the reference. Go back to my previous post and you will find the quote.

"previous post" is the one you did on the same date as the one
I am replying to here, January 26. You mean the one you did that
preceded THAT, on January 23.

> > And you ducked my question about the articles that he REFERENCED.


> Why should I even consider your questions when you snip and ignore Muller's quotes that I've posted and explained where he only considers differential fitness to reproduce.

See above about "a different name".

> >
> >
> > <huge snip of things to be dealt with next week. I'm chasing
> > an end-of-the-month deadline>

Actually two, but I got a two day reprieve on the less demanding
one when I mentioned the more demanding one.


> Next you will be claim the dog ate your homework.

It must be great to have so few demands on your time, that you
can throw such insults at me.

Are you retired? Do all your children have such rich lives to lead
that they hardly ever contact you?


Continued in my next reply to this thread.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

Univ. of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[jillery]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 04:46:46 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net> wrote:

>On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 6:30:02 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 12:36:23 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> wrote:
>>
>> >On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 12:30:04 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> >> On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 11:15:40 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> >> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 10:25:03 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> >> >> FTR (look it up), regular posters know I don't claim any particular
>> >> >> expertise about any topic.
>> >> >Well said Barbie. Between you and Bobby's failure to get anything out of his two courses in statistics, meet the qualifications as believers in reptiles grow feathers dogma.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> I note your incoherent non sequitur spam, ass.
>> >I note your mathematical incompetence for which you rightly acknowledge your lack of expertise.
>>
>>
>> Of course, not claiming any expertise is very different from
>> acknowledging lack of expertise. Your statement above is an
>> illustration of stupidity you share with your OTP.
>So what is your area of expertise? And why don't you tell us exactly what I share with my so-called OTP? I think you share much more with Peter than I do. You and Peter use 19th-century science, geometry, and a yard-stick to try to determine relatedness when 21-century science determines relatedness on a molecular level. You do know that DNA exists and you get that DNA from your parents.
>>
>> And since there's no mathematics here to note, your comment above is
>> an obvious lie, what you post when you have no idea what you're
>> talking about and have nothing intelligent to say.
>I have nothing intelligent to say that you would understand.

Too bad you posted nothing intelligent at all. So your comment above
is yet another obvious lie.

>You have to understand introductory probability theory and you don't Barbie.
>>
>>
>> >So what has happened to all your biologists with knowledge of probability theory? Did they go extinct?
>>
>>
>> I'm supposed to have biologists?
>None which understand probability theory and how it applies to rmns.

According to you, nobody but you understands probability theory and

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 12:36:23 -0800 (PST), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net>:

>On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 12:30:04 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 11:15:40 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> wrote:
>>
>> >On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 10:25:03 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> >> FTR (look it up), regular posters know I don't claim any particular
>> >> expertise about any topic.
>> >Well said Barbie. Between you and Bobby's failure to get anything out of his two courses in statistics, meet the qualifications as believers in reptiles grow feathers dogma.
>>
>>
>> I note your incoherent non sequitur spam, ass.

>I note your mathematical incompetence for which you rightly acknowledge your lack of expertise.

I too have a lack of expertise in the field of mathematical
incompetence, so I'll bow to the acknowledged expert in that
field. Over to you again, Allie...

> So what has happened to all your biologists with knowledge of probability theory? Did they go extinct?

They got tired of trying to educate the incompetent
pretending to be an expert in biology. HTH.

HAND, Allie.

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 11:15:40 -0800 (PST), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net>:

>On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 10:25:03 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:

>> FTR (look it up), regular posters know I don't claim any particular
>> expertise about any topic.

>Well said

Agreed. Unlike some here*, she and I both recognize that
we're not polymaths.

*Purported medical doctors with purported doctorates in some
unspecified field pretending to be experts in biology, and
having the sheer gall to lecture *actual* experts, for
instance. Just as a hypothetical example, of course...

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

MP does not use this definition. From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection
"Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype."
For the concept of survival of the fittest, that is the appropriate definition. But for the concept of "improving fitness", you must use the absolute fitness to reproduce which is simply the total number of replications a variant can do. The reason that measure must be used for improving fitness is the probability of the beneficial mutation occurring is dependent on the number of replications a variant can do.

>
>
> > This is the way you have to measure fitness if you want to do the mathematics of improving fitness.
>
> Improving absolute fitness, or improving differential fitness?

Both. But understand this, differential fitness applies in the competitive environment where improvement of fitness can occur in the midst of this competition but the process is slowed by this competition. Study and understand the Lenski experiment and the Kishony experiment to see an empirical example of this.

>
> And if the latter, how can you be sure that there haven't been
> papers that incorporate the concept of "absolute fitness" under
> a different name, in the process of analyzing differential fitness?

Haldane and Kimura use the concept of differential fitness, I've been studying the literature for a long time and have never seen papers of this type. I've seen blogs where this topic is discussed but no papers. But if you have a link, I'd be interested to see it.

>
> > >
> > > > Muller only considers differential fitness to reproduce, the former measure.
>
> > > You have yet to quote the place where he does that.
>
> I was misled by the word "considers" here. He only MENTIONS it in a brief
> paragraph where he outlines the strengths and weaknesses of MS.

All the work I've seen on this topic considers only the differential reproductive success for their mathematical models. In fact, Haldane says the following in his paper on the cost of natural selection:
"The principle unit process in evolution is the substitution of one
gene for another at the same locus."
That claim is correct when talking about survival of the fittest but does not address the mathematics of improving fitness.

>
> > I did and you snipped the reference. Go back to my previous post and you will find the quote.
>
> "previous post" is the one you did on the same date as the one
> I am replying to here, January 26. You mean the one you did that
> preceded THAT, on January 23.

Do me a favor, don't snip my posts and then claim that I don't respond. I'll post Muller's text again.
"Even though it never constituted an encompassing formal synthesis [34], this movement had brought together the basic neo-Darwinian principles of variation, inheritance, differential reproduction and natural selection with Mendelian, experimental and population genetics, as well as with concepts and data addressing the patterns of evolution stemming from the fields of palaeontology, botany and systematics. The formalized core of the MS theory was—and still is—population genetics [35], a mathematical account of gene frequency dynamics in populations of organisms."

>
> > > And you ducked my question about the articles that he REFERENCED.
>
>
> > Why should I even consider your questions when you snip and ignore Muller's quotes that I've posted and explained where he only considers differential fitness to reproduce.
>
> See above about "a different name".
>
> > >
> > >
> > > <huge snip of things to be dealt with next week. I'm chasing
> > > an end-of-the-month deadline>
>
> Actually two, but I got a two day reprieve on the less demanding
> one when I mentioned the more demanding one.
>
>
> > Next you will be claim the dog ate your homework.
>
> It must be great to have so few demands on your time, that you
> can throw such insults at me.

What makes you think this isn't work? I just happen to enjoy my work. And my discussion here helps me produce my papers on rmns.

>
> Are you retired? Do all your children have such rich lives to lead
> that they hardly ever contact you?

I still practice medicine but not full time anymore, no kids, but I also have a ranch and raise goats and chickens. In fact, it's just about time to go feed the animals. You learn something about selection pressures when you do this.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 5:30:05 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 1:40:04 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 9:40:04 AM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 4:55:05 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> > > > On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 2:55:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > > > > On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 10:40:03 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > > > On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:55:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:

> > > > > > > I keep waiting for you to show us how Muller explains how rmns works.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Why? You accused Muller of being ignorant of it, so it is up
> > > > > > to YOU to show where he botched the alleged explanation.
> > > >
> > > > > Muller makes no explanation on the subject of rmns.
> > > >
> > > > Here, you implicitly admit that you LIED about having caught
> > > > Muller in an error about them.
> >
> > > Stop being a nitwit (if you are capable of that).
> >
> > You are indulging in a dirty debating tactic that I have called
> > The Broken.Usenet.Promise.

> You snip my posts and then call me a liar.

Show me where I snipped something relevant to THIS claim
of yours.

This was the following claim about Muller:

This author makes the same blunder that every biologist makes,
that is population genetics only consists of the mathematics
of survival of the fittest. He says that here:

"The formalized core of the MS theory was--and still is--population

genetics [35], a mathematical account of gene frequency dynamics in
populations of organisms."

There is NO mention of "survival of the fittest," which happens to
be a phrase whose biological meaning is widely misunderstood.

In my first reply I wrote:

"Fitness" is defined in MP as the number of offspring that
survive to reproduce.

And you quoted something irrelevant in your reply:

MP does not use this definition. From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection
"Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction
of individuals due to differences in phenotype."

There is only one difference between what I wrote on FITNESS and
what the section on fitness in the same Wiki entry says: it
uses "adulthood" where I write "to reproduce":

Fitness
Main article: Fitness (biology)

The concept of fitness is central to natural selection. In broad terms,
individuals that are more "fit" have better potential for survival, as in the
well-known phrase "survival of the fittest", but the precise meaning of the
term is much more subtle. Modern evolutionary theory defines fitness not
by how long an organism lives, but by how successful it is at reproducing.

But the real story comes next, where "success at reproducing" is explained,
and then the real lowdown on the word "fitness" comes.

If an organism lives half as long as others of its species,
but has twice as many offspring surviving to adulthood, its genes
become more common in the adult population of the next generation.

Back in the 1990's, leading population genetics researcher
Felsenstein often posted to the now-defunct sci.bio.evolution,
and IIRC he used "to reproduce" instead of "to adulthood."

This seems to make more sense, in light of what comes next--
the real lowdown:

Though natural selection acts on individuals, the effects
of chance mean that fitness can only really be defined "on average"
for the individuals within a population. The fitness of a particular
genotype corresponds to the average effect on all individuals with
that genotype.[60]

And LO! [60] is clickable and takes you to a pdf whose abstract reads
in part:

the word "fitness" has been used to mean subtly different things. Here I
distinguish among these meanings (e.g., individual versus absolute versus
relative fitness) and explain how evolutionary geneticists use fitness to
predict changes in the genetic composition of populations through time.

Note the expression "absolute...fitness".

Is this one of the papers you thoroughly studied to come to the conclusion
that biologists don't understand rmns? The author, H. Allen Orr, finished
off the abstract with:

I also review the empirical study of fitness, emphasizing approaches
that take advantage of recent genetic and genomic data. Finally,
I highlight important unresolved problems.


Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

Univ. of So. Carolina in Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

What exactly do you think is the meaning of "gene frequency"? Have you ever studied Haldane's and Kimura's mathematics? It's all about gene frequency and the fixation or substitution of the more fit for the less fit. Clearly, you have little understanding of this mathematics.

If you used mathematics, you wouldn't need this long circumlocutory post to try to describe fitness to reproduce, either relative or absolute.

[jillery]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 11:00:31 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>
wrote:

>On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 11:15:40 -0800 (PST), the following
>appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD
><klei...@sti.net>:
>
>>On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 10:25:03 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>
>>> FTR (look it up), regular posters know I don't claim any particular
>>> expertise about any topic.
>
>>Well said
>
>Agreed. Unlike some here*, she and I both recognize that
>we're not polymaths.

Of course, I said nothing of the kind. You don't usually accept such
obvious misrepresentation so credulously.

>*Purported medical doctors with purported doctorates in some
>unspecified field pretending to be experts in biology, and
>having the sheer gall to lecture *actual* experts, for
>instance. Just as a hypothetical example, of course...
>
>HAND, Allie.

--

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Tuesday, January 30, 2018 at 2:30:03 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 11:00:31 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>
> wrote:
>
> >On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 11:15:40 -0800 (PST), the following
> >appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> >:
> >
> >>On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 10:25:03 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> >
> >>> FTR (look it up), regular posters know I don't claim any particular
> >>> expertise about any topic.
> >
> >>Well said
> >
> >Agreed. Unlike some here*, she and I both recognize that
> >we're not polymaths.
>
>
> Of course, I said nothing of the kind. You don't usually accept such
> obvious misrepresentation so credulously.

That's right, you said you have no expertise. And Bobby's only area of expertise is low illumination. So what makes you so sure that reptiles grow feathers? Oh, that's right, it's the ArchieDumbtrex fossil. Is that your area of expertise?

[Bob Casanova]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 17:29:30 -0500, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>:

>On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 11:00:31 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>
>wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 11:15:40 -0800 (PST), the following
>>appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>><klei...@sti.net>:
>>
>>>On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 10:25:03 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>>
>>>> FTR (look it up), regular posters know I don't claim any particular
>>>> expertise about any topic.
>>
>>>Well said
>>
>>Agreed. Unlike some here*, she and I both recognize that
>>we're not polymaths.
>
>
>Of course, I said nothing of the kind. You don't usually accept such
>obvious misrepresentation so credulously.

To me, "polymath" means "one with wide knowledge in multiple
fields", so "I don't claim any particular expertise about
any topic" is equivalent to "I don't claim to be a
polymath". I don't see the problem there, but I'll refrain
from using the term if you wish.

>>*Purported medical doctors with purported doctorates in some
>>unspecified field pretending to be experts in biology, and
>>having the sheer gall to lecture *actual* experts, for
>>instance. Just as a hypothetical example, of course...
>>
>>HAND, Allie.
--