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Pastimes : Neocon's Seminar Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gao seng who wrote (497)	5/8/2001 3:45:35 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1112

What you mention from Blatty is what I would finally like to determine. I see both claims of the impossibility of random evolution, and also read dismissals of those assertions, and I am uncertain of the science. The odds against life forming from chance are astronomically high, of course, and I suspect that things like meaningful cell differentiation are inconceivable without intervention, since the part cannot exist properly without the whole, as it were, and the whole (nervous system, circulatory system, whatever) is an articulated structure, not just a mass of cells. But I am not sure. To prove, once and for all, that it couldn't work by random mutation would be a big discovery. I meant the second meaning of "mare's nest". The drawings are not so bad, and some of the poetry is interesting, but the ideas are a tangle of allegories and half- baked mysticism, and I have never had the patience to go far with it. The book does sound interesting. Who knows, when I finish a few other things.....

To: gao seng who wrote (497)	5/8/2001 5:57:40 PM
From: Mitch Blevins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1112

such a probability would require ten to the two hundred forty-third power billions Careful when you throw around big numbers... it is very easy to get the wrong idea because our intuition is not useful at that scale. For example, if I go to Vegas and watch a roulette table for three hours, the odds of those specific numbers coming up in a row like that again are even greater than your big number above. Like so: Number of slots on wheel: 38 Number of spins: One per minutes or 180 altogether. So, 3 hours yeilds 38 to the 180th power, which is equal to over ten to the 275th power billions. Now, I don't imagine a divine intelligence behind the roulette hits just because the specific numbers that came up are improbable. I assume that you also would chalk it up to chance. However, if there was a player at the table that bet on the exact right outcome every roll for 3 hours straight, we might have a different idea. We would say that there is a conspiracy, or a cheat, or some intelligence behind the events that made it come out that way. The odds of every roll are exactly that same as before (when we attributed it to chance), but now we see a pattern behind the events. Something that seems to indicate a design or goal. hmmmmm.... Enter the Dung Beatles Certain species of dung beatles will build large arches out of dung. This impressive engineering feat is something they did long before humans figured out how to make an arch. If we assumed that each beatle just randomly wandered around and dropped balls of dung, then the odds of building an arch would probably be very long: somewhere close to the numbers you give above on the incredulity scale. Since we know that beatles do not have the neural capacity to make architectural plans, do we assume that there is some guiding intelligence (perhaps divine?) that directs the beatles along each step in building the arches? No. We do not have to, because we have a better explanation... Whenever dung beatles drop a ball dung on the ground, they secrete a chemical on top of it. Additionally, they are more likely to drop their dung-ball on top of a previously chemical-marked place than one without marking. From these two simple rules, arches form (without guidance or intelligence). Image a random bunch of dung beatles on a flat plain. They initially just drop their dung at random, then scurry off to get another dung-ball. However, the second time they come back, they will most likely drop their load onto another dung-ball, slowly forming a pillar. If two pillars are close enough to each other, the chemical attraction from the matching pillar will cause them for grow towards each other as they grow up. Eventually they will meet in the middle, forming an arch. The odds of random beatle dung-ball dropping forming an arch are beyond astronomical. There are only a few simple rules (or beatle instincts) that produce the complex arches, and no guiding intelligence. hmmm.... So, are there a few "simple rules" that we might be missing when we marvel at the complexity and improbability of life? Yes.... "Replicators replicate" (to quote Richard Dawkins) A pattern, molecular or not, that tends to produce similar patterns will flourish far beyond that which chance would imply. It is a simple rule, a tautology really. But one that seems to elude most people.