john edser

JE:-
Hi Jim welcome back. I missed your
"honest broker", approach.

Here I agree with Phillip, especially if you
define variation as being produced by
by just a random process. Quite obviously,
even if entire genes can be deleted by it
e.g. genetic drift which is a random process.
Any random process cannot direct anything.
That is the reason it is termed a random
process. A random pattern cannot direct
anything either but a random pattern
(not a random process) may be caused
by either a random or non random
process. So any non random process that
produces a random pattern may direct things
but not via any random pattern it produces.
An example would be meiosis. Until meiotic
drive genes were discovered it was assumed
that meiosis was just a random process.
The t allele of mice is an example. Once
discovered it was shown that these genes
did fit Hamilton's expectations, i.e.
Hamilton's rule was verified by the t allele.
Of course verification and non verification
are *NOT* definitive. In just relative_
(comparative) measure only, the t allele can
increase compared to the wildtype gene
at however at an absolute cost to both
because this gene causes one adult form
to become sterile. Quite obviously t
alleles can only constitute a tiny part
of a population or they extinguish a
population.

The fact of a relative gain only obtained
at an absolute cost should have been seen
to be of much greater significance than
just the relative increase of the t allele.
Typically, this fact was just ignored
because the total fitness of the actor
is simply deleted from Hamilton's Rule
just at it was deleted from Haldane's
comment in a pub by which Hamilton
was pre-empted. As far as Darwinism
is concerned, the t allele was not
selected for, it just arose via random
variation. At the moment only negative
meiotic drive effects have been do***ented.
I think this is because they are more obvious.
I propose that if a beneficial gene was
so driven then the rate of evolution could
be accelerated. The cost would
be the occasional pushing of the wrong genes.
I argue that meiotic drive was selected
for because it provided a mean increase in total
Darwinian fitness even if it can occasionally
be non beneficial, i.e. it follows the logic
of mutation except that meiotic drive is
non random. Mutation protection
and repair are not random. The struggle is to
balance variation with selection to provide
the best outcome within changing environments.
This is what Darwin proposed. Nothing has
changed since then. People are not even
reinventing the wheel, they are just dragging
carts without wheels arguing these are more
modern.

If variation is not just a random process
then it could direct evolution. In this
instance it would have to compete against
natural selection if these two non random
processes contested in their direction.
It is just obvious that selection will win.
This is why Darwin's idea was so enormous.
Selection cannot be beaten. This has miffed
so many people it is not funny..


JE:-
Defining evolution as just ANY change
in gene frequencies is like defining
wealth as ANY increase in money. Both
are hopelessly incorrect. REAL
wealth increases may or may not be correlated
with increases in money, e.g. hyper-inflation.
Allowing random changes in gene freq. to validly
constitute evolution and not just variation is
just an evolutionary theory act of fitness hyper-inflation.

JE:-
This is where I disagree with Phillip.
Fitness is a REAL and EXACT measure of Darwinian
fertile organism selectees. I have defined it and
provided an experiment that can refute it. Such
basics have NOT been completed by Neo Darwinians
who seem to comprise of a rag tag collection of
mathematicians who know almost nothing of the
science of biology. They cannot provide a theory
of fitness that can be tested to refutation so
what do they do? They just throw the process
of refutation out the window and claim irrefutable
axioms of mathematics are enough. Let me assure
reader's mathematics is NOT a science. Dispensing
with Popper is the same logic as killing the patient
to cure a disease.

The problem with Darwinian fitness is the
fact that it is gene _fitness_ epistatic.
Neo Darwinism simply tackles this problem
like it tackled Popper, just delete it.
All these deletions are fine within simplified
models because models are NOT theories
of nature they are just theory approximations
used to help to understand the theory they
were simplified from. Like some sort of
Neo Darwinian Dracula these models have taken
on a life of their own which they do NOT
posses and are used to invalidly contest
and win against their own parent theory.
Such an act is absurd.


JE:-
Phillip, you are only attempting to reinvent the
wheel. Darwin (implicitly) defined fitness as
the total number of fertile forms reproduced
into one population by one parent. Epistatic
gene fitness is _totally_ fertile organism centric
and not at all gene centric. In order to provide
a REAL gene level of selection gene fitness must NOT
be epistatic, i.e. all gene fitnesses must be
additive and not non additive. The Darwinian
total fitness concept is the only fitness
concept that can be tested to refutation.
Unless a theory of fitness can be tested to
refutation and not just non verification,
it cannot validly compete against the
Darwinian refutable concept.

My Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser@tpg.com.au

phillip smith

in article cnjpem$2jc5$1@darwin.ediacara.org, John Edser at edser@tpg.com.au


To measure the fitness of an individual you must know how many offspring it
will have and how many offspring they will have etc. In other words you must
know the reproductive future of the individual. How you can do this with
out a time machine.
I need to be careful here, perhaps more correctly I should have said I am
working on a concept to replace fitness rather than to reformulate fitness.
Science is prediction. If I cannot predict the reproductive success of an
individual then I cannot measure their fitness. I can, perhaps, extrapolate
the mean reproductive success of the previous generation but that is not the
same thing as fitness being a property of an individual.

If I understand you correctly you are suggesting that evolution is not about
genes. I would completely agree with you. For my purposes I prefer genomes
but selection only acts of phenotype.


--

Phillip Smith
phills@(buggger).co.nz replace bugger with ihug
http://www.applied-evolution.co.nz


"he who is smeared with blubber has the kindest heart" -- a Greenland Eskimo
adage

tim tyler

Tho usual approach here is to use the term "expected fitness" if the
outcome is not yet known with certainty.

Expected fitness represents a guess at the evential fitness - based
on currently-available information.
--
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wlhunt

A odd consequence of this method of tabulating fitness by counting
offspring is that there is some point in the future where everyone
alive today will be in one of two sets. One is the set that has no
descendents at this future point in time. The other is the set where
everyone alive at this future point in time is your descendent.
Estimates are that about 80% of us will be universal ancestors.
So in this sense everyone today has zero fitness or Edser's fitness
maximand but we don't know which without our time machine.
William L Hunt

tim tyler

Yes:

``If your time machine has taken you sufficiently far back, you can
divide the individuals you meet into those who are ancestors of every
human alive in 1995, and those who are ancestors of nobody in 1995.
There are no intermediates. Every individual you set eyes on when
you step outside your time machine is either a universal human
ancestor or not an ancestor of anybody at all.''

- R.D., R.O.O.E. p.37


I believe that estimate is derived from a model which assumes random
mating.

Unfortunately random mating is not a very realistic assumption.

In particular, it is wrong for most species - since the chance of
individual males reproducing is often rather low - and a low chance
of male reproduction seriously adversely affects the probability
of being an ancestor.

I generally prefer the Dawkins take on this issue:

``"Of all organisms born, the majority die before they come
of age. Of the minority that survive and breed, an even smaller
minority will have a descendant alive a thousand generations
hence. This tiny minority of a minority, this progenitorial elite,
is all that future generations will be able to call ancestral.
Ancestors are rare, descendants are common.''

- R.D., R.O.O.E. p.1

....or perhaps the perspective of Gould - who observed that most
individuals from the Cambrian era have no surviving descendants
in modern times at all.

My estimate would be that /most/ of the bodies we observe will
have no distant descendants.
--
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perplexed in peoria

In the same vein, since John's name was dragged into this:

Suppose I am one of the unlucky (unfit?) 20% who leave no descendents.
My Time Machine Fitness (TMF) is zero. But suppose my full sib's TMF is
maxed out. Does that mean that my inclusive TMF (ITMF) is 0.5 of the max?
We need to run our time machine in both directions to compute the ITMF.

Still Perplexed.

tim tyler

Either that - or keep records of what has previously happened - or else
use genetic similarity to judge relatedness retrospectively.
--
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