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What, if the DNA isn't well put in order and full of more and less senseless rests of former mutations beside the "sense-making sentences"? The "rests" partly could easely be re-animated per mutation, giving a new chance to collaborate with the given already working sentences! Maybe, there is a bunch of sentences which are only not providing the current "version" of the species.

That is indeed the case. You can have entire regions become active/inactive by switching its marker (junk DNA) or you can have small pieces become inactive if they don't make sense in their context (as is done during the translation process). I referenced the former as evidence for common descent because we share a lot of inactive regions with other mammals.

@Irish_Farmer
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Now, if you let monkeys randomly type at the keyboard, even if they get a letter right, it has to make sense in the overall picture. In other words ending up with the word 'Ruy' wouldn't be useful because even though its closer to 'Fly' it makes no sense. We can randomly get closer to a different sentence, but because the DNA is already ordered, it has to fit into the larger picture of the order because the creature is dependent on this pre-existing order to live.

You are assuming that the whole genome must be used, that it can not be extended, and may not contain useless data. All three assumptions are invalid as far as the biology behind it is concerned: a large portion is not used, it can be extended, and useless data exists. However, I grant you that the monkey-typewriter example is too simplistic. It's best used as an example of random chance vs. random chance plus optimal selection, e.g. writing one 10-letter phrase per second it would take up to 79,000 years to randomly type "TOBEORNOTTOBE". Using selection on correct letters this is cut down to ca. 90 seconds.

Last edited by Marco_Grubert; 05/02/06 02:00.