Wiseman comments on Natural Selection's Speed Limit and Complexity Bound - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 November 2007 04:54PM

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Comment author: Wiseman 05 November 2007 07:23:57AM 0 points [-]

Scott A. I wasn't suggesting DNA would magically *not* mutate after it had evolved towards sophistication, only that the system of genes/DNA that govern a system would become robust enough so it would be immune to the effects of the mutations.

Anway, evolution does not have to "correct" these mutations, as long as the organism can survive with them, they have as much a chance of mutating to a neutral, positive, or other equally detremental state as it has of becoming worse. As a genome becomes larger and larger, it can cope with the same ratio of mutations it always has. The effects of the mutations don't "add up" as is assumed by Eliezer, they effect the local region of DNA and its related function, and that's it. If an organism happens to have a synergetically enhanced group of detrimental mutations, then yes that one will die, but showing empirically that that would happen more often than not, I thin, would be very difficult.

In any case, I still don't see where the ~25 megabyte number comes from. Wouldn't you need to know precisely how many mutations were detrimental to work that number out? And I'm assuming it's reasonable to say we don't have that information?