Questions (from Aleksey Khrulev) and Answers (not only to him)
One of the readers of "Computerra" decided to ask me questions that arise for him in connection with reflections on biology. These questions, of course, are asked by a person "not from our sandbox" - they demonstrate a mode of thinking different from that which is customary for me and most of my colleagues. But, of course, they also demonstrate...
[An argument moved here from a letter, belonging to Aleksey Khrulev]So, argument 1, let us call it "Evolutionary intensity".==============================First I will reason it through, and then I will draw conclusions. Changes in a species during evolution are composed of changes in the genotype of individual organisms: successful ones remain in descendants, unsuccessful ones disappear, since the organism does not leave offspring. Therefore, the frequency with which a beneficial mutation appears in a population is proportional to the birth rate of individuals. For example, if beneficial mutations appear once per 100 born individuals, then in a population of 1000 individuals over 20 generations the mutation will appear (1/100) * 1000 * 20 = 200 timesLet us call this the "evolutionary intensity" of a species, that is, the larger the population and the shorter the time until offspring are born, the HIGHER the species' "evolutionary intensity."This is a rather obvious line of reasoning. Now let us see how it accords with well-known facts. Compare the "evolutionary intensity" of two animals: mice and elephants.A mouse can reproduce at the age of 3 months, whereas an elephant does so at 16 years. Therefore, the rate of generation turnover in mice is 64 times higher.Let us also compare the total number of individuals. Very roughly, I will assume that there are 10,000 times more mice (my reasoning: the mass of a mouse is 100,000 times smaller, so in the same habitat there can be that many more mice feeding than elephants. I reduce this number by a factor of 10 to obtain a lower bound).As a result, we get that the frequency with which mutations arise in mice is greater than in elephants by the following factor:64 * 10000 = 640000Mammals are thought to have appeared about 200 million years ago. Therefore, if elephants had enough time to evolve from some common ancestor, then mice would have needed only200 million / 640000 = 312 years.That is, mice ought to evolve over the course of only a few hundred years. When people speak about evidence for evolution, they usually mean changes such as color, body proportions, pesticide resistance, and so on. But I am speaking about other changes - major ones, such as the difference between a mouse and an elephant. Over millions of years mice should have developed infrared vision, poisonous spines, silent locomotion, and all sorts of other superpowers. In reality, this does not happen. Moreover, an elephant's organism is even more complex than a mouse's: its trunk contains 4000 muscles, and all of them are controlled from the brain!!!!So I formulate the contradiction between theory and facts as follows: if species with low "evolutionary intensity" evolved into such complex forms, then species with high "evolutionary intensity" should change substantially right before our eyes. In reality, we do not observe this (only colors, sizes, proportions, resistance to substances, etc. change).==============================My calculations may be very crude, but I hope the idea is clear.