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This argument is however an argument from faith and not from computability perspective. Random garbage genes flipped on won't grow a leg with intricate mechanic

This argument is however an argument from faith and not from computability perspective. Random garbage genes flipped on won't grow a leg with intricate mechanical abilities. Those abilities have to be computed somewhere and need to be useful right from the start to appear in offsprings otherwise they get eliminated as a waste. Yet everyone puts their faith in some random process instead of pinning down the concrete mechanisms how does this happen. So you basically end up forcing some idiotic faith on everyone instead of digging deep and figuring it finally out. I would be more inclined to believe if you told me that pre-adolescent brain spends 25% of its computing capacity on figuring out how to improve its body and encoding it into genes instead of trusting some random mutation (likely error-corrected) to do the heavy lifting.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
It's not a faith thing. Yes, metabolic advantage is a thing and useless adaptations can get eliminated over time (it seems to matter more in single-cellular organisms, though). However, often enough, unused adaptations can persist for a long time - for example, pythons still have the whole blueprint for "a leg with intricate mechanical abilities" and nerves and stuff, it's literally just switched off. We know because some researchers figured out how to flip it back on, and behold, snakes grew their legs back. That's what I've been alluding to in the prior comment - genes aren't encoding a flat blueprint, but a complex program with many genes working as flow control or signalling superstructure, able to toggle or modify whole complex body parts.
exe34 2y ago
> I would be more inclined to believe if you told me that pre-adolescent brain spends 25% of its computing capacity on figuring out how to improve its body and encoding it into genes instead of trusting some random mutation (likely error-corrected) to do the heavy lifting. this is an argument from personal incredulity. just because you are too dumb to understand how something works doesn't mean that your fantasy/sci-fi version is accurate. brains changing genes belongs in a discussion of Neal Asher's polity, not in a biology discussion.
- treprinum 2y ago
  So you are saying that e.g. a large mammal lifespan of 70 years is sufficient to generate as many good random mutations as needed to grow a new leg over 10,000 generations if necessary? Where is the evidence of a fast algorithm requiring so few selections to come up with a complex new organ? How is that not blind faith? Not sure who is the dumb one here...
  - exe34 2y ago
    > a large mammal lifespan of 70 years is sufficient to generate as many good random mutations as needed to grow a new leg thankfully, nobody is claiming that happens. i can explain more, but there's the issue of my fees. £200,000 seems reasonable, given how dumb you are.

TeMPOraL 2y ago

It's not a faith thing. Yes, metabolic advantage is a thing and useless adaptations can get eliminated over time (it seems to matter more in single-cellular organisms, though). However, often enough, unused adaptations can persist for a long time - for example, pythons still have the whole blueprint for "a leg with intricate mechanical abilities" and nerves and stuff, it's literally just switched off. We know because some researchers figured out how to flip it back on, and behold, snakes grew their legs back. That's what I've been alluding to in the prior comment - genes aren't encoding a flat blueprint, but a complex program with many genes working as flow control or signalling superstructure, able to toggle or modify whole complex body parts.

exe34 2y ago

> I would be more inclined to believe if you told me that pre-adolescent brain spends 25% of its computing capacity on figuring out how to improve its body and encoding it into genes instead of trusting some random mutation (likely error-corrected) to do the heavy lifting. this is an argument from personal incredulity. just because you are too dumb to understand how something works doesn't mean that your fantasy/sci-fi version is accurate. brains changing genes belongs in a discussion of Neal Asher's polity, not in a biology discussion.

treprinum 2y ago
So you are saying that e.g. a large mammal lifespan of 70 years is sufficient to generate as many good random mutations as needed to grow a new leg over 10,000 generations if necessary? Where is the evidence of a fast algorithm requiring so few selections to come up with a complex new organ? How is that not blind faith? Not sure who is the dumb one here...
- exe34 2y ago
  > a large mammal lifespan of 70 years is sufficient to generate as many good random mutations as needed to grow a new leg thankfully, nobody is claiming that happens. i can explain more, but there's the issue of my fees. £200,000 seems reasonable, given how dumb you are.