I think it’s very hard for a single step of evolution to create a balloon large enough to counteract the organism’s weight, fill it with a lighter-than-air gas (e.g. hydrogen), and then adapt the organism for survival in the air.
Each one of these adaptations is not very useful without the others, so they must all evolve at once.
A lot of things in nature seem to defy irreducible complexity, e.g. flowers, insect wings, web spitting spiders. Irreducible complexity is still the correct explanation why many things don’t exist, e.g. a large animal which shoots a swarm of wasps as its enemies would be very adaptive in theory, but doesn’t exist because it’s hard to evolve.
But I was wrong to imply that irreducible complexity predicts/proves balloon-algae shouldn’t exist. It’s really just my explanatory model of why balloon-algae doesn’t exist, given the hindsight information that there is no balloon-algae.
there are species of microbe that float pretty well, though. as far as we know right now, they just don’t stay floating indefinitely or fuel themselves in the air.
I think it’s very hard for a single step of evolution to create a balloon large enough to counteract the organism’s weight, fill it with a lighter-than-air gas (e.g. hydrogen), and then adapt the organism for survival in the air.
Each one of these adaptations is not very useful without the others, so they must all evolve at once.
But how do you distinguish this argument from other arguments that prove false things?
Hmm you’re right, that’s a good point!
A lot of things in nature seem to defy irreducible complexity, e.g. flowers, insect wings, web spitting spiders. Irreducible complexity is still the correct explanation why many things don’t exist, e.g. a large animal which shoots a swarm of wasps as its enemies would be very adaptive in theory, but doesn’t exist because it’s hard to evolve.
But I was wrong to imply that irreducible complexity predicts/proves balloon-algae shouldn’t exist. It’s really just my explanatory model of why balloon-algae doesn’t exist, given the hindsight information that there is no balloon-algae.
there are species of microbe that float pretty well, though. as far as we know right now, they just don’t stay floating indefinitely or fuel themselves in the air.