DEBATE | Is There Code in DNA? | Jon Perry of Stated Clearly Vs TJump

LINKS TO GUESTS:

Jon Perry is a science educator and the founder of Stated Clearly, a website and YouTube channel producing animations about genetics and evolution.

Other details about Jon:
Company: Stated Clearly
Job Title: Science Educator
Location: Montreal, Québec, Canada

Twitter: @statedclearly

TJump:

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OUR CHANNEL & HOW TO SUPPORT IT
My name is James Kunz and I'm a PhD student in psychology in Colorado, US. In my own academic journey, many academics (though not all) have become closed to controversial people or topics being debated/discussed. Thus, my goal is to provide a non-partisan and truly-tolerant debate platform that welcomes everyone.

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DISCLAIMER The views shared by guests on Modern-Day Debate are not necessarily representative of the views of Modern-Day Debate, James, or any university he has or has had any affiliation with.
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The music we use during the intro is:
World Goes Wild
by: Above Envy
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#Stated #Clearly #DEBATE

[stanb]

Modern-Day Debate info at 01:25
Debate starts at 04:35
Q&A starts at 1:12:46
Post-credits scene at 1:20:41

[ericthetyrannoceratops]

Jon Perry is one of the big reasons why I left YEC. His video series called Science VS. the Ark Encounter exposed to me how dishonest Ken Ham is. I forever will be grateful of that.

[Magmamaster]

These conversations would be significantly more fruitful if both debaters agreed on definitions as well as topics before the debate. If both debaters can't agree on a definition you can still hold a debate but it won't elevate the discourse.

[miichelleerin]

I'm drinking every time Jon says " physically"

[jamesdownard]

Although there are many variant codon assignments in nature, they involve reassignment of some of the redundant ones, suggesting natural systems (or any Intelligent Designer) don't have the option to arbitrarily assign the codons. Jackson Wheat and I delved into some of the relevant literature on these issues in an Appendix to "The Rocks Were There", which included these paragraphs:

That idea had occurred to researchers before, but it was the “wobbly” side of nucleotide interactions, especially regarding the third codon spot, that proved insightful. Highlighted by mathematician Nils Barricelli (1912-1993) in the 1970s, in recent years the Caetano-Anollés team (Derek, Gustavo, Kelsey, and colleagues) have explored how codon connections could have arisen prior to the triplet system, based on such factors as affinities in the folds of primordial molecular chains and those found in the ribosome replicating system.

They suggest lowly little proline may have been the first kid on the block, associating on its own with the cytosine nucleotide. Which is interesting, given the ease with which cytosine deaminates to uracil, accounting for its absence as primordial leftovers in meteorites (along with the other pyrimidine thymine, which similarly decomposes in the presence of molecules like hydrogen peroxide).

[martinpfefferle]

Best debate you've hosted in a while, most of them feature one side asserting shit the whole time with no basis in reality.

[TheSonShinesever]

I THOROUGHLY enjoyed this debate, this is one of the best ones yet in my opinion.

[TrueScandinavia]

Jon Perry won this quite handily. But props to TJump for trying! Great debate.

[marketingdisaster]

I'm just getting started but so far I'm really impressed with these slides and explanation! Great stuff, don't turn out to be a nut

[Anakox]

Doesn't really look like a debate. More like one person providing factual information and another trying to play with definitions while still agreeing with the first one on everything.
Anyways, Jon Perry is exactly the type of people I would love to see here more. Great and informative video.

[ibugama]

33:55 Tjump: "the code is something independent of the computer".

No, you don't know what you are talking about!

The computer (i.e. processor) can only read machine code for its specific architecture. It cannot be arbitrary (it has a fixed set of instructions it understands) and even its "words" don't have arbitrary sizes, hence 32 bit vs 64 bit architectures.

The code Tjump is talking about that has abstractions are programming languages that have been made on top of machine code in order to make it easier for programmers to write code. But there is no escaping the physical reality that that code has to be either compiled or interpreted into machine code that the processor can actually read in order for the processor to know what to do with it.

[TheWuschi]

What a wonderful surprise! - Since I did not know Jon Perry before (now, I'm definitely looking into Stated Clearly - my next action on Youtube!), I expected TJump to be confronted with exactly the kind of "If it's a code, there must be a coder, du-uh!"-theist both combattants so clearly repudiated, each of them in his own clever way. The discussion was so great and I learned so much out of it, since no time had to be wasted on defending and defying any invisible friends. I loved it!

[benhaylock]

This debate is quite thicc. I feel out of my depth and it's awesome

[dcko]

It's basically like a discussion if "natural" means "not super-natural" or does it mean "not man-made". You can think humans just make "shapes" when coding, the "mind" is still a bunch of physical "shapes" sticking to each other etc. I think they're both correct, they just order the world differently :)

[karthain]

Tom is right when it comes to what creationists mean bye code. John should have talked to many more creationists before he came on this debate. You can’t debate one creationist and think you’re ready.

[steveg]

I can get that the genetic code is arbitrary in the sense "it could have been different." But I think Perry is stretching on this point a bit - because it's still speculative, with research continuing on this, because it could still be found to be the case that there are biochemical constraints OR biochemical advantages (or a combination of both) that led to producing the particular "standard" amino acid translation that exists today. Perry seems to be advocating the "frozen accident" hypothesis. (And, again, it could be the case that it's a combination of all three - constraints, advantages, and arbitrary accident.)

Perhaps Tom Jump is not articulating it in the most effective way, but I think what he's getting at is that in the context of people claiming that "code must come from a mind, " it's obvious that computer code came from minds - regardless of the fact that it's implemented within the constraints of particular physical systems. Whereas with the DNA code-transcription-translation, at every step we're talking about a mindless process. (And as I'm fairly certain Perry would agree, this process is actually a later stage in the evolution of life, and not actually the origin of the first very primitive living organisms.) I think this is the point of Jump saying that it isn't "abstract."

But Perry is NOT arguing that the "code must come from a mind." He's merely pointing out the manner in which it does function as a code - a coding mechanism involved in a particular biochemical process - with no mind involved at any step, including in the evolutionary steps involved in producing the DNA process in the first place.

This should not have been a "debate" format, but should have been in the format of one of the informal discussions that both Tom Jump and Jon Perry also use often in their videos.

References:

"Origin and Evolution of the Universal Genetic Code"
By Eugene V. Koonin and Artem S. Novozhilov
(Annual Review of Genetics, November 2017)

"The Origin of Prebiotic Information System in the Peptide/RNA World: A Simulation Model of the Evolution of Translation and the Genetic Code"
By Sankar Chatterjee, and Surya Yadav
(Life, Mar. 1, 2019)

[DeviantincTV]

Jon's intro is quite compelling (not heard TJ yet), but I would like to see if a codon could be reassigned to code for a different amino acid, the way we could rearrange an ASCII table and give different characters different hex values. Then I'll be convinced.

[RetrogradeBeats]

The DNA" code" is descriptive not prescriptive and I wouldnt expect any theist to understand the implications or else they wouldnt argue such a ridiculous case because it is embarrassing

[zach]

Am I wrong to think that TJump’s debaters often look away, down, etc when he speaks?

[SnakeWasRight]

Ribosomes do not interpret. They simply react.

Jon is mixing up signals and symbols.