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by nixonpjoshua1
3246 days ago
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I agree that the polarization is useless. However what you said about selective breeding vs GM is just wrong. Selective breeding introduces numerous mutations, including ones often not even related to the desired traits. In contrast human directed genetic modification often changes a single gene, the state of the art in research universities for specific modifications is only in the tens of genes. You can only say they are not comparable in the sense that selective breeding introduces far more changes than GM and also in the sense that with GM we know what changed where in selective breeding we do not necessarily know how the change was produced or what the extent of it was. Also I understand that this is a computer centered site but thinking of DNA as binary is a often used but terrible analogy. Living organisms were designed through complete randomness, try refactoring that. If you wanted to turn teosinte into corn without any random mutations and selection I think that would be far beyond our abilities for 100 years at least. |
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In evolution there's no design, which implies prediction and a model of function. But evolution is far from "completely random". In fact evolution goes to great lengths to correct mutations and only allows mutation in certain carefully controlled sequences of the genome where variation is potentially useful. There are sequences in our genomes that are identical to those of yeast, having been faithfully copied, and error-corrected, for billions of years.