Posted: Jun 06, 2017 8:23 pm
Rumraket wrote:OrdinaryClay wrote:Rumraket wrote:OrdinaryClay wrote:rumraket, good info and I'll go there in a minute.
Second observation, which to me seems completely non-controversial whether you are a materialist or not. The sample space over the entire history of life on the earth is staggeringly enormous (yes I'm completely on board with the 3.8 BY give or take trajectory of life). No?
Sure, the space of potential, probably never realized genomic sequences, is enormous. Much greater than the sampled one.
What is an unrealized genomic sequence? Still borne?
I just mean one that never came to exist. In this sense I would say that technically a stillborn, or dead-on-arrival organism (that died due to lethal mutations), is still a realized genomic sequence. It existed in reality once upon a time.
The set that has never come to exist is calculable and so large as to beyond even the time scales of the universe. That set is not relevant.
My discussion is restricted to the set that has existed. That's the sample space I'm talking about.
But at the phenotypic level I believe it is more common than at the genetic level, because for the most part, we inhabit similar environments and are subject to similar selective pressures. And there are usually many different genetic pathways to the same phenotypic result.
There are many examples of convergent evolution. Then why are there not more phenotypes that map their own genomes.