Did you reply to this? The reason I express uncertainty is that I
have been seeing several posts replying to other posts that I
never saw, leading me to suspect I'm not getting everything. I
think it was also about this time that another curious thing
happened, I received an identical set of 6 posts repeatedly
five times in a row, roughly every five minutes. I don't think
this was a problem with the reflector since at least one of the
6 came from another source. Apparently I'm having problems with
my e-mail server. I also tried looking at the archives for a
reply but have been unable to connect for some reason.
*****
I did but I never posted corrected numbers here is that post
with the corrected numbers. This is exactly why I put the math
out there so it can be critiqued and my errors can be found.
The 10^93 suggestion came from Brian concerning the number of
usable forms in a given sequence length. Jim is right.
The principle I am very poorly attempting to illustrate is that
the probability argument has a failure that if ;you search for
a short sequence in a longer one, there are a large percentage
of those sequences in the phase space which have those.
Below is the corrected post.
*****
Abstract: I show that Brian Harper's objection to the fall of the
probability argument is based upon ignoring the CONTAINED shorter
sequences in the phase spaces of the larger ones. These contained
sequences can be cut out of the longer sequences by random cuts
with a probability of around 1/10000 to cut it in the correct
place.
Brian Harper wrote:
"Not only could one read falacy and understand that fallacy was
intended, one could do the same for all of the following:
falllacy, faalacy, falicy, faallaaccy, falllaci etc. etc.
The problem then is the combination of English phrases with an
intelligent interpretor is probably muchmore flexible in
retaining function (meaning) than in a protein sequence."<<
I am not sure that I could do with an English sentence what Terry
said was done with the Lambda receptor, namely take one sentence
of 100 letters long, and mutate it in 10^55 ways and still retain
meaning. The first sentence above written as "Hot only could une
bead falacy and kndervtand tzar fallacy yas intended, one could
do the same for all the following." That is only 8 mutations and
meaning is almost gone! Proteins have lots of locations in which
almost any amino acid can go without hurting its meaning.
English is not quite so flexible.
Brian Wrote :
>>Another point though is that when you start to consider other
sequences that convey the same meaning, these sequences are for
the most part all of different length chaning the associated
probabilities. For example, there are several different ways of
saying the same thing. The total number of sequences of the same
length is given in [brackets] following each phrase.
a) if pick nose get warts [10^31]
[...snip]
i) When a digit is inserted into a nostril the finger produces
calloused bumps [10^107]
My point hwere is that your adding up all the different ways of
producing a particular meaning is not really fair."<<
*****endquote*****
First, I am not merely "adding up all the different ways". You
have not understood what I am saying in my argument. This is
evident from your later statement,
>>As noted above, Yocky found that there were 10^93 functional
sequences of length 110. According to what you wrote above there
are 10 known sequence lengths for cytochrome c. Let's suppose
there are also 10^93 functional sequences for each of these
lengths. This seems pretty generous to me in view of your
suggestion of trillions above, 10^93 is literally trillions of
trillions ;-). But we note that we have only increased the
number
of functional sequences by a factor of 10, now we have about
10^94.<<<
Herein lies your misunderstanding. I have, by this method, not
merely increased the chances by a factor of 10. Let me diagram
this for you. Consider a 112 length sequence and a 111 length
sequence. The phase space of the 112 length sequence contains
several examples of the 111 length sequence in it. The 112
length
sequence can be made by adding one amino acid to either end.
[111]* or *[111]
where [111] is the 111 length sequence and * is
the additional amino acid. Since any of 20 amino acids can go
into this * position, there are 20 +20=40 copies of any given 111
sequence in the phase space of the 112 sequence. By merely cutting
off one end, I have the increased the probability not by 10 but
by 40 to find a [111].
Consider other lengths factor increase is in {}.
[110]** + *[110]* + **[110] = {3 x 20^2=1200
[109]*** + *[109]** + **[109]* + ***[109] {4 x 20^3=32000
[108]****+*[108]***+**[108]**+***[108]*+****[108] {800000
etc. etc.
If each length has 10^93 functional permutations, then there are
10^12 x 10^93 = 10^98 functional [108] in the phase space of the
[112]. These [108] can be obtained by merely cutting the [112].
To cut it in the proper place is (1/112)^2=1/12544.
In support of the concept that this type of cut is to be expected
I will quote from a well known creationist. He says,
"But, according to the laws we have just been studying,
reaction time in reversible reactions will also increase still
more the possibility of degradation (randomness) of already
synthesized
molecules, that is, if their entropy is lower than that of the
starting materials. It is so easy to forget that the possibility
of decomposition in reversible reactions increases with time just
as the chance of synthetic processes does." A.E. Wilder-Smith,
Man's Origin, Man's Destiny, p. 67.
Brian, you are not dealing with the CONTAINED functional sequences.
This is a BIG hole in all probability calculations. Assuming your
10^93 usable functions for each of the sequences from 111 down to
103 in length, then the phase space of the [112] sequence has
40 x 10^93 [111]'s + 1200 x 10^93 [110]'s + 32000 x
10^93 [109]'s + 800,000 x 10^93 [108]'s.
The largest contributor to that sum is the last term. And there
can not be 10^93 functional sequences in short sequences which
don't have 10^93 permutations, but subject to that limitation,
there are lots of functional permutations CONTAINED in a longer
sequence.
We are not dealing with the independent production of sequences of
103,104,105... but with the independent production of 112's and
the volume of contained 103's, 104's 105's.... This is a very
different problem than what is normally presented.
Brian wrote:
>>This seems to me to be just wild speculation. Perhaps a
possible length of a protein that could perform some nontrivial
function? Is it even remotely conceivable that something as
simple as leu-ser could perform the function of cytochrome c?<<
I was using the ser-leu as an illustration of the mathematics of
the phase spaces of contained sequences. I am NOT making the
claim that ser-leu could perform that function. All I wanted to
show was that a short sequence has LOTS of copies in a longer
sequence and this I successfully showed.
If my memory does not fail me, oxytocin is only 8 residuals long.
I bet you could find a longer sequence which would perform that
function, but you might have to search a long time.
glenn
*******end of old post.
By the hopefully correct, and more defendable calculation there
are 5.1 trillion copies of the [103] cytochrome in the 112
phase space. So if there are 10^93 useable copies, then there are
10^105 copies contained in the phase space of the [112] While that
is only 10-40 of the [112] phase space, the phenomenon grows
with shorter sequences. This is never discussed in creationist
probability arguments.
Brian wrote:
>> It is clear enough that this will increase the number of functional
sequences, however, there is some disagreement (see above) regarding
just how much. So, let's just say the number of functional sequences
increases by some factor F so that there are now F*10^x functional
sequences of length N buried in the sequences of length M. Here
we note that the number of nonfunctional sequences also increases,
and by the same factor, i.e. whatever math you do to compute the
number of new functional sequences also applies to the nonfunctional
ones. So, we also have F*10^y nonfunctional sequences of length N
buried in the sequences of length M. The probability that any of
the sequences of length M will contain one of the functional
sequences of length N is thus:
F*10^x 10^x
p = --------------- = --------------
F*10^x + F*10^y 10^x + 10^y
******
I MAY be wrong but if you increase the frequency of functional sequences,
shouldn't the non functional sequences decrease by F*10*x? Otheerwise
you could end up with the total number of functional and nonfunctional
sequences being more than the total number of sequences.
Brian wrote:
1) It seems to require a primeval soup. There is no evidence that
a primeval soup ever existed and many strong reasons for
arguing that it did not. Thus I would have to be very skeptical
of any scenario requiring a soup.
*****
I am not trying to support the primeval soup, merely trying to show a hole
in the creationist probability argument.
Brian wrote:
2) It seems you need a fairly good probability for a chance
encounter between cutter and cuttee which would imply that
not only do you need a soup, you need a rather concentrated
soup.
3) You also have to consider the probability of the chance formation
of cutters. This may be considerably more probable than the chance
formation of something like cytochrome c, however, the problem
is that you would seem to require lots of these buggers to ensure
that whenever your sequences of length M form, they also get cut
twice.
4) For your scenario to work seems to require that it is fairly
probable that a sequence of length M, once formed, gets cut
twice to give your sequence of length N. But, if cutting is
so probable, why twice and not thrice?
*******
I am not sure why one wouldn't call the RNA world, a "soup" but
if you have a system which creates long strings, some will
spontaneously break At least that is what I thought was
the case. If this is wrong, someone please correct it. And
if the strings will occassionally spontaneously break, then
cutters will be formed also by the same mechanism.
And I would agree that three cuts would
occur all the time as well as 4. To me, this seems to
increase the odds that you will find a short sequence to perform
any function, including your cutters and other enzymes
which could then form a reproductive system.
glenn