I think we’re pretty much on the same page. But have you actually calculated the odds? One in a million is no big deal. Twenty half-chances.
I must say I haven’t, and I don’t know how to (especially since it’s all screwed up by genes moving around and getting passed on together, and I don’t understand the first thing about all that). But it feels more like ‘thermodynamic entropy’ than ‘winning the lottery’.
Also remember that nothing is perfectly neutral. Even the banana man might get fed banana-cake by a dastardly enemy.
No, I haven’t actually calculated the odds. I wouldn’t really have much of an idea how. (I could probably work it out on a basis of—if a gene has x% chance of preventing descendants as compared to not having that gene and a y% chance of being passed on to any descendants—and then do some overly-simplified calculations from the values of x and y—but I haven’t, yet.)
Also remember that nothing is perfectly neutral. Even the banana man might get fed banana-cake by a dastardly enemy.
True, but his problem there isn’t the banana gene. His problem there is that he has a dastardly enemy. If he didn’t have the banana gene, the dastardly enemy could simply feed him arsenic cake instead, or just shoot him.
I think we’re pretty much on the same page. But have you actually calculated the odds? One in a million is no big deal. Twenty half-chances.
I must say I haven’t, and I don’t know how to (especially since it’s all screwed up by genes moving around and getting passed on together, and I don’t understand the first thing about all that). But it feels more like ‘thermodynamic entropy’ than ‘winning the lottery’.
Also remember that nothing is perfectly neutral. Even the banana man might get fed banana-cake by a dastardly enemy.
No, I haven’t actually calculated the odds. I wouldn’t really have much of an idea how. (I could probably work it out on a basis of—if a gene has x% chance of preventing descendants as compared to not having that gene and a y% chance of being passed on to any descendants—and then do some overly-simplified calculations from the values of x and y—but I haven’t, yet.)
True, but his problem there isn’t the banana gene. His problem there is that he has a dastardly enemy. If he didn’t have the banana gene, the dastardly enemy could simply feed him arsenic cake instead, or just shoot him.