Okay, just as a for-example, the two arginines in SARS2's furin cleavage site -- the novel insertion that makes the virus infectious in humans -- are coded CGG-CGG. Back of the envelope, the odds against that happening by randomly flipping RNA bases would appear to be four hundred to one. There are six different three-base RNA sequences that all code for arginine, and CGG is the rarest code for arginine in coronaviruses, used for only five percent of the arginines in SARS2. That would seem to imply likely formation by recombination rather than by point mutation. This raises the question, where were those CGGs copied from? CGG-CGG is a sequence that hasn't been found in any other beta coronavirus. But CGG is a very common code for arginine in humans. For a scientist trying to create a cleavage site in order to perform a gain-of-function experiment of the sort we know the Wuhan lab was doing, putting in two CGGs would be a natural choice.
Clearly, you're not an expert neither. You are describing some math, but you are not giving any background basis for what the inputs should be, because you don't have it. Don is right about it sounding like ID, this is no different than when Michael Behe comes up with some probability that proves evolution couldn't produce some protein. Just like Behe does, your .05 x .05 assumes simultaneous mutation. And a 1/400 number is hardly a big hurdle anyway when you consider a single covid infection produces billions of copies.
My point is that you can't even assign a probability because you have no idea of how many rolls of the dice there were.
I.e., you guys and Don didn't understand the argument.
Nobody misunderstood your argument, they just disagreed with it as well as the facts and reasoning you used, obtained from Wade.
Bomb#20 said:
Nobody is claiming SARS1.9 couldn't have naturally evolved a furin cleavage site.
But you are claiming it is a very rare thing which is a problem for at least two reasons. (1) Your information from Wade was wrong--it's common and (2) even if it were not common, that's the point of natural evolution...in a world of things it does, the results are often an uncommon or improbable thing. Creationists often argue how unique or specific the thing is, rather than taking an outside view that there are a gazillion improbable things and one ends up as a result. It's like if you buy a lottery ticket and use the machine to select the numbers and they come back with some combination--any combination--you can't then say what were the odds of that?! I understand it's more nuanced in a sense, but in a broader view of not merely the lottery ticket, you also have a hundred people each choosing a lottery ticket and you are ignoring all of them except 1, saying, "see look?! this one here has some consecutive numbers! That was most likely intelligently designed." There are many other features that nature might evolve that would also be suspicious to conspiracy theorists. The probability is high that at least one naturally evolved feature would be cause to start screaming about intelligently designed inserts into the genome.
Bomb#20 said:
This isn't a Behe argument; I'm not assuming simultaneous mutation; and the number of copies/rolls of the dice is irrelevant.
No, the number of rolls of the dice is relevant, but perhaps not in the exact way you mean.
Bomb#20 said:
If one of the natural origin scenarios is what happened then the sequence would probably have been different from what it's observed to be;
Yes, odds are that you can find an evolved feature out of many evolved features and say, "the odds of that one thing happening that way are too rare."
Bomb#20 said:
therefore the observation that it's CGG-CGG makes those scenarios less likely.
I disagree with the philosophy. The true probability of a past event is either 0% or 100%, we just don't know which one. If you were actually able to look at each and every involved issue and show the probabilities, you might have some kind of point, but your assessment of one or the other using Bayesian statistics to derive a mathematical statement that P(X)>.5 is pseudoscience because you're just listing out some incomplete things, some cherry-picked stringencies by Wade, some not included, and some unknown and then saying "but I'm allowed to do it because it's intuition!" That's kind of ridiculous. It would be like me saying my probabilistic assessment based on all available evidence is intuitively that the P(X)<.25.
Since we're talking about CGG, it should be stated that CGG is common in codon usage. So IF it's naturally evolved OR recombinant from an intermediate host, then all that is required is the 100% probable past event that such intermediate host had CGG as common codon. We don't actually know the codon usage in most organisms. We don't know if mink has CGG as a common usage or not. However, we DO know it's common with hamster and that hamster could spread the virus just like mink.
There is not a lot of published data on codon usage for tons of potential intermediate hosts but CGG is expected to be common.
What I can also tell you is that the 12nt sequence is in the hamster genome. Just do a BLAST to confirm. Here is top hit:
Cricetulus griseus strain 17A/GY unplaced genomic scaffold, alternate assembly CriGri-PICRH-1.0 unplaced_scaffold_55, whole genome shotgun sequence
Query 1 CCTCGGCGGGCA 12
||||||||||||
Sbjct 85478 CCTCGGCGGGCA 85489
The point isn't to promote a hamster hypothesis, just to show it's more common than let on.
The 12nt sequence also hits to American mink. Here is top hit:
Neovison vison isolate M4711 chromosome 1, ASM_NN_V1
Query 1 CCTCGGCGGGCA 12
||||||||||||
Sbjct 920139 CCTCGGCGGGCA 920128
And here's pangolin:
Manis pentadactyla isolate MP20 unplaced genomic scaffold, YNU_ManPten_2.0 scaffold_111_MP20
Query 1 CCTCGGCGGGCA 12
||||||||||||
Sbjct 941542 CCTCGGCGGGCA 941553
Calling him "non-expert" was not the ad hominem. Calling him "hack" was the ad hominem.
