Jean-Francois Gariepy (@JFGariepy)

This is a complex question and there will not be a single number. It will be dependent on what is defined as fixation (is a gene similar across 99.99% of humans fixated or not?). It will also depend on what we do with genes that could have been fixated to be different from the common ancestor but then reverted back to their common ancestor form in our evolutionary history. Does that count for 0 or 2 fixation events? The number will also vary depending on how we count similar fixation events that have happened parallelly in the two species. I'm not raising these concerns to avoid answering the question, just pointing to the fact that this number is not unique according to how we approach the problem. With all that being said, none of my argument relies on this number being a particular value, so sure, let us accept an average of 2.22 fixed mutations per year on average for the purpose of discussion... now what? The problem of @voxday's thesis is not that we disagree on this number. It is that @voxday's calculations fail to take into account the higher rate of fixation in sexual species such as humans compared to non-sexual ones such as bacteria. Meiosis is a bitch.