The Most Important Moment from the Genetic Entropy Debate: Paul Conceded, Didn't Realize It
I know we've been talking a lot about the recent debate on "genetic entropy" between Dr. Zach Hancock (/u/talkpopgen) and Paul Price (can't link a reddit account because he keeps deleting them), but I wanted to highlight the most important moment of the debate for everyone.
The format was opening-cross-opening-cross, and Paul went first, and the important part happened in Zach's five-minute cross-examination immediately after. Click the video link at the very top of this post to watch the actual exchange, but basically what happened is Zach got Paul to admit that 1) slightly beneficial and slightly harmful mutations do NOT behave the same as strictly neutral mutations, and 2) proportionally fewer beneficial mutations can compensate for the effects of proportionally more harmful mutations.
And...that's it! Debate over. "Genetic entropy" relies on 1) slightly harmful mutations cannot be selected out of a population, and 2) beneficial mutations cannot compensate for the accumulation of those harmful mutations.
In those 5 minutes, Paul conceded that both points are wrong. He didn't realize it, but that was the end of the debate right there. So I want to make sure everyone gets the importance of what happened there.
Genetic entropy is fake. It's popgen fanfic. The data prove it, and Paul, a committed young earth creationist, a former writer for CMI and AiG, agreed. The end.