In any event, McCarthy’s critique is the first substantive one we’ve seen and it’s a more competent attempt to engage with the mathematical arguments in Probability Zero than those from Redditors opining in ignorance, but his critique immediately fails for multiple reasons that demonstrate the significant difference between biological intuition and mathematical rigor. For some reason, McCarthy elects to focus on the Darwillion, my probability calculation about the likelihood of evolution by natural selection instead of MITTENS itself, but that’s fine. Either way, there was no chance he was going to even scratch the paint on the proven fact of the mathematical impossibility of natural selection.
“What Vox Day calculated—(1/20,000)^20,000,000—are the odds that a particular group or a pre-specified list of 20 million mutations (or 20 million mutations in a row) would all become fixed. In other words, his calculation would only be accurate if the human race experienced only 20 million mutations in total over the last 9 million years—and every one of them then became fixed… Using Vox Day’s numbers, in a population of 10,000 humans, we would expect, on average, 50,000 new mutations per year. And over the course of 9 million years, this means we would expect: 50,000 × 9 million = 450 billion new mutations altogether. So out of 450 billion mutations, how many mutations may we expect to achieve fixation? Well, as Vox Day noted, each mutation has a probability of 1/20,000 in becoming fixed. 450 billion × 1/20,000 = 22.5 million fixed mutations.”
This is a category error. What McCarthy has done here is abandon Darwin, abandon natural selection, and retreated to an aberrant form of neutral theory that he’s implementing without even realizing that he has done so. He’s cargo-culting the structure of Kimura’s core equation that underlies neutral theory without understanding what the terms mean or where they come from. Because my numbers weren’t arbitrary, they are straight out of Kimura’s fixation model.......
.....McCarthy is correct that humans have a higher per-genome mutation rate than E. coli—roughly 60-100 de novo mutations per human generation versus roughly one mutation per 1000-2400 bacterial divisions. But this observation is irrelevant. Once again, he’s confusing mutation with fixation.
I don’t know why this is so hard for evolutionary enthusiasts to grasp: we actually know what the genetic distance between two different species are. We know the amount of time that it took to create that genetic gap. And there are not enough generations, not enough births, not enough reproductions, to account for ANY of the observed genetic gaps in the available amount of time.......
......He’s absolutely correct to observe that I don’t attack or address any of those things in Probability Zero. I didn’t need to do so. It’s exactly like pointing out how I haven’t admired the arrangement of the furniture on the fifth floor or taken in the lovely view from the twentieth when I planted the explosives in the underground supports and the entire building is lying in smoking rubble. Natural selection never accounted for any of those things to which he appeals. It could not possibly have done so, and neither could genetic drift.
All those things exist, to be sure but they do not exist because of evolution by natural selection. Mr. McCarthy will need to find another mechanism to explain them. Which, of course, is something I pointed out in the book. IGM might be an answer, but perhaps there are other mechanisms, although I will caution the enthusiast that so far, every single one of the various natural possibilities suggested, including viruses, similarly fail to address the relevant reproductive constraints and therefore are not viable.
Now, all that being said, I am extremely grateful to Dennis McCarthy for his critique, because the way in which he indirectly invoked the Kimura fixation model inspired me to look directly at its core equation for the first time. Now, I knew that the model was incomplete, which is why I first created a corrective for its failure to account for overlapping generations, the Selective Turnover Coefficient. And I also knew that it was not a constant 10,000 as it is commonly utilized by biologists, because my analysis of the ancient DNA database proved that it varied between 3,300 and 10,000......
......Let’s just say neutral theory is no longer a viable retreat for the Neo-Darwinians. The math is real. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the math is the only reality, but it is definitely the one thing you cannot ever ignore if you want to avoid having all your beautiful theories and assumptions and beliefs destroyed in one fell swoop.
Probability Zero will be in print next week. You can already preorder the print edition at NDM Express. And for an even deeper dive into the evolutionary science, The Frozen Gene will be available in ebook format, although whether it will be on Amazon or not is yet to be determined.
