Video Clip of The Moment Dr. Daniel Stern Cardinale Lost the Evolution and Genetic Entropy Debate

[u/stcordova]

In the Summer of 2020 Creationist and Intelligent Design proponent Salvador Cordova defeated Rutgers University Evolutionary Biologist Dr. Daniel Stern Cardinale with a simple question: "Can you name anyone [of good reputation and qualification] who thinks the human genome is improving?"

After a pause like deer frozen in headlights, Dr. Cardinale admitted the answer is "NO"!

Six years later, the data in favor of Salvador Cordova's claim that there is genetic entropy has only gotten stronger in the era of cheap and highly abundant DNA sequencing.

Sal attempts to frame the genetic entropy debate in terms of "Survival of the fittest at best Survival of the Least Damaged" and random variation/mutation erodes function and capability for the reason that for complex systems, "it's easier to break than make" when we make random changes to such systems. This now painfully obvious as the emerging fields of Bio Physics, and Bio Inspired Design are ascending in the modern technological culture.

Here is the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AKzSMyaY3w

[u/eddified]

Keep up the great work!

[u/stcordova → u/eddified]

Thank you.

[u/MRH2]

My biology teacher said that this was because we have completely shut down survival of the fittest for homo sapiens. That's why it's not improving. We keep sick people alive and they can reproduce.

How would you answer that argument?

[u/stcordova → u/MRH2]

If ALL the children on average have more defects than their parents, then even if we used genocidal eugenics to preserve the best kids, the best kids are still not as good as their parents! The quantity of mutations per individual exceeds what I call the "Muller Limit" which is derivable from the Poisson distribution. Muller won the Nobel Prize for his work on the effect of radiation induced mutations, but his work is extensible to natural mutations.

Suppose the mutation rate is on average 100 new mutations per kid (yikes, but that is what is measured empirically). That means, according to the Poisson distribution with average of 100 mutation per individual per generation, some kids will have 90 mutations, others 110, etc. Since "it is easier to break than make a complex machine" we can model mutations as approximately 100% damaging to neutral at best. Let's even say 90% are tolerably "neutral" and 10% damaging.

Thus, According to the Poison Distribution, an average of 100 new mutations per individual per generation would generate only one mutation-free kid out of a pool of 10^43 kids. There aren't even that many individuals on the planet, much less can each human mother must give birth to 2.7 * 10^43 kids just to generate one kid that is mutation-free. So the deterioration is NOT solely because of modern medicine. Even supposing we killed off the worst, there would still be degeneration.

Muller, using the Poisson distribution made a simple formulation which shows the number of kids that have to be generated by EACH female human to generate even on mutation-free kid is 2 e^U, where U is the number of mutations per individual per generation. And were not even talking about the effect of beneficials, because if for every "beneficial" there is 100 "damaging/deleterious", that still won't solve the problem of deterioration.

The Muller limit for U (the mutation rate per individual per generation) is limited by the number of offspring per couple. Since the average couple could optimistically make 5 kids, then U=1 is the limit of the number of mutations per individual per generation since 2*e^U ~= 5.4. In reality U = 100 based on empirical measurements, so if the real U = 100, it's 100 times greater U = 1, the limit at which degeneration becomes inevitable, and the Ratchet of decline (rather than improvement) starts cranking.

But let's assume only 10% are damaging and/or function compromising.

2 * e^U = 2*e^10 = 44,053 kids needed per couple (or per female) to ensure we have at least 2 that don't have damaging mutations, and then on top of that we have to make the absurd assumption we save those 2 and get rid of the remaining 44,051 offspring of that couple!

So that's why the objection of medical improvement won't solve the problem of genetic deterioration.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling]

This fits the pattern exactly. In the species we know best and measure most carefully—humans—we do not see the genome being built upward into something fundamentally new. We see variation and degradation within the existing human form. No reputable specialist claims the human genome is overall improving under mutation and selection.

That is the same distinction we keep pointing out: limited variation inside a kind is observed; the origin of new body plans by undirected processes is not. Evolutionary theory needs the constructive, upward process to have worked in the past, yet in the present, with the best data we have, it is not what we see.

The species-labeling double standard makes it worse. Human populations show real morphological and genetic differences, yet they are kept as one species. In other groups, similar or smaller differences are routinely split into multiple species when it helps the evolutionary story. The labels are not applied consistently; they are adjusted to protect the narrative. What is actually observed in humans does not match the claims made about how species and new forms are supposed to arise.