Theory of Variance and Life on Earth

[himoura]

I don't even know who bob dutko is. Never heard of the guy but I appreciate you trying to suggest I am plagiarizing someone else's work and passing it off as my own.

 

If u wanna know the truth I just really admire Olber's Paradox. I think that was a magnificent observation which presented a conundrum that couldn't be solved for literally hundreds of years. This does appeal to my mischievous side I won't lie but it's more then that. I want to push the field ahead. Maybe it has something to do with string theory or dark matter but I strongly feel there is a piece of the puzzle we are missing. If I can help narrow it down I will.

 

Look u made some clever arguments. I applaud you for that but it doesn't mean I am wrong.

 

You quoted the university of California Santa Cruz which said "planetary collisions are very common". I agree with that. I fully agree. So how is that not random? lol. I mean really let's examine that. Just because something is common doesn't mean it happens for a reason. Is there some natural process I am unaware of that dictates which planets crash into each other?? No... It is assumed to be random.

 

@mooey how does commonality translate into purpose? How does the fact that something is common make it purposeful in any way? The short answer is it does not unless u can prove there is a natural process in place that orchestrated the result.

 

As far as the poker analogy goes you are making a clever point by saying that lots of flushes and straights happen because so many hands are being played all over the world. This is true. But remember... the earth is one solitary body subject to one set of odds. Just because billions of flushes happen all over the universe does not mean they will happen in one place. This perfectly explains why we have around a hundred planets in the goldilox zone yet none of them support life. A planet has to do a lot more then just be the correct distance from the sun. Think about it... have u ever met one poker player that always wins almost every hand? I haven't. As a matter of fact if u ever do please introduce as I will take him to Vegas so I can clear away my school loans. Honestly man u seem like a pretty clever guy... why do u keep linking to these stupid vids that are obviously beneath you? (this is a compliment btw)

 

Here is another link to a credible theory that postulates the rarity of the earth. The preface of this book is extremely enlightening. These two guys came up with the idea at some kind of NASA conference. There is a direct link from Wikipedia to a free preview. This theory has criticisms to be sure but nowhere near as many as the inflation theory. That theory may be more accepted now but it has some major obstacles. The flatness problem is probably the biggest.

 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis

[swansont]

You can have random elements but not a random outcome. (I am using random here to mean "all outcomes are equally likely"). The implication of using "luck" or "chance" is that there are no deterministic processes, and that's false. For one thing, it ignores that after an event has occurred, the probability of that event occurring is 1.

 

If poker were truly random, then we should not expect a subset of players larger than random chance to consistently do well. But we do. There's a nonrandom element that prevents the results from being just luck. There is skill involved.

 

Similarly, a planet that occupies a habitable zone does not maintain its orbit via luck. It maintains that orbit because there are deterministic laws of motion. If I mix oxygen and hydrogen together and ignite the mixture with a spark, I will not get an assortment of molecules with random numbers of each element. I will get a whole lot of water, and that is not luck.

 

You have proceeded from a false dichotomy that if a process is not completely determined it is completely random.

[himoura]

Deterministic laws of motion are all that keep earths orbit intact right? Bull crap dude. If Jupiter and Saturn weren't there stabilizing the earths climate would have decayed long ago. Now what are the odds of that??

 

http://www.mahalo.com/answers/what-role-does-jupiter-play-in-the-orbit-path-of-the-earth

Edited August 26, 2011 by himoura

[mooeypoo]

@mooey how does commonality translate into purpose? How does the fact that something is common make it purposeful in any way? The short answer is it does not unless u can prove there is a natural process in place that orchestrated the result.

What does anything have to do with purpose? We are talking about chance. Don't move the goalpost.

 

As far as the poker analogy goes you are making a clever point by saying that lots of flushes and straights happen because so many hands are being played all over the world. This is true. But remember... the earth is one solitary body subject to one set of odds. Just because billions of flushes happen all over the universe does not mean they will happen in one place. This perfectly explains why we have around a hundred planets in the goldilox zone yet none of them support life. A planet has to do a lot more then just be the correct distance from the sun. Think about it... have u ever met one poker player that always wins almost every hand? I haven't. As a matter of fact if u ever do please introduce as I will take him to Vegas so I can clear away my school loans. Honestly man u seem like a pretty clever guy... why do u keep linking to these stupid vids that are obviously beneath you? (this is a compliment btw)

You say that the earth is one solitary object -- without proof. We don't know that. There might be a million earths out there. There might be billions. We don't know.

 

 

 

that said, I will really appreciate it if you stop getting personal and offensive. People answer you, you may disagree, but do so in a civil matter. These are the rules, and you've been warned about this 3 times already.

 

 

It's very hard to keep in topic when every time we make a valid point you seem to deteriorate the argument into personal attacks and jabs.

[swansont]

Deterministic laws of motion are all that keep earths orbit intact right? Bull crap dude. If Jupiter and Saturn weren't there stabilizing the earths climate would have decayed long ago. Now what are the odds of that??

 

http://www.mahalo.com/answers/what-role-does-jupiter-play-in-the-orbit-path-of-the-earth

 

Climate ≠ orbit

[himoura]

"You can have random elements but not a random outcome. (I am using random here to mean "all outcomes are equally likely"). The implication of using "luck" or "chance" is that there are no deterministic processes, and that's false. For one thing, it ignores that after an event has occurred, the probability of that event occurring is 1."

 

"You have proceeded from a false dichotomy that if a process is not completely determined it is completely random."

 

i never meant to suggest any outcome is 100% random and that's why you keep misinterpreting what i am saying. the word random is confusing because it has multiple definitions. you are taking a mathematical truth and perverting it to suggest something it was never meant to suggest. by the context of your definition odds and chance do not exist and the probability of every event is 1:1 which we all know is incorrect otherwise everyone on here would be running out to play the lottery.

 

"If poker were truly random, then we should not expect a subset of players larger than random chance to consistently do well. But we do. There's a nonrandom element that prevents the results from being just luck. There is skill involved."

 

only because you can cheat the odds by tricking your opponent into playing or not playing. this is easily seen by playing poker machines. when you look at a group that plays machines you will not see a subset of players consistently do well... you do not understand the game of poker and so the statement above is patently false in its context.

 

 

here is some blurbs to back me up from the book "Rare Earth". deterministic laws of motion do not even begin to account for all of the specifics of the earths orbit. some of this is just plain mind boggling.

 

"The Moon plays three pivotal roles that affect the evolution and survival of life on Earth. It causes lunar tides, it stabilizes the tilt of Earth's spin axis, and it slows the Earth's rate of rotation. Of these, the most important is its effect on the angle of tilt of Earth's spin axis relative to the plane of its orbit, which is called "obliquity." Obliquity is the cause of seasonal changes." p.223

 

"If the Earth's formation could be replayed 100 times, how many times would it have such a large moon? If the great impact had resulted in a retrograde orbit, it would have decayed. It has been suggested that this may have happened for Venus and may explain that planet's slow rotation and lack of any moon. If the great impact had occurred at a later stage in Earth's formation, the higher mass and gravity of the planet would not have allowed enough mass to be ejected to form a large moon. If the impact had occurred earlier, much of the debris would have been lost to space, and the resulting moon would have been too small to stabilize the obliquity of Earth's spin axis. If the giant impact had not occurred at all, the Earth might have retained a much higher inventory of water, carbon, and nitrogen, perhaps leading to a Runaway Greenhouse atmosphere." p.234

 

"Astronomer Jacques Laskar, who made many of the calculations that led to the surprising discovery of the Moon's importance in maintaining Earth's stable obliquity, summarized the situation as follows:

'These results show that the situation of the Earth is very peculiar.

The common status for all the terrestrial planets is to have experienced

very large scale chaotic behavior for their obliquity, which,

in the case of the Earth and in the absence of the Moon, may have

prevented the appearance of evoluted forms of life. . . . [W]e owe

our present climate stability to an exceptional event: the presence

of the Moon.' p.224

"Doug Lin at the University of California at Santa Cruz has calculated that spiral waves generated in the solar nebula phase can extract energy from a young Jupiter and cause its orbit to spiral inward. In many cases the planet actually hits the star; in others the inward drift stops before collision occurs. The observed giant planets that are very close to stars may be examples of this inward drift. Events such as this can be calamitous for terrestrial planets. When a Jupiter spirals inward, the inner planets precede it and are pushed into the star. If our Jupiter had done this, Earth would have been vaporized long before life-tolerant conditions were ever established on its surface. Lin has suggested that our solar system may have had several Jupiters that actually did spiral into the sun, only to be replaced with a newly formed planet. Perhaps Jupiter is at its "right" distance from the sun only because it was the last one to form and it formed at a time when the solar nebula had weakened to the point where orbital decay ceased to be important." p. 242

 

Edited August 26, 2011 by himoura

[mooeypoo]

because you can cheat the odds by tricking your opponent into playing or not playing. this is easily seen by playing poker machines. when you look at a group that plays machines you will not see a subset of players consistently do well... you do not understand the game of poker and so the statement above is patently false.

Which is why this analogy is false.

 

Something that is repeatedly told in this post.

 

Progress, at last.

 

here is some blurbs to back me up from the book "Rare Earth". deterministic laws of motion do not even begin to account for all of the specifics of the earths orbit. some of this is just plain mind boggling.

I didn't chime in with this earlier because it was a bit off the main point, but "Rare Earth" is a hypothesis, not a full fledge theory. It is not substantiated to a level that it explains all we have, it's not mainstream common thinking. As I told you before, and as many others tell you, scientists cannot state whether the earth is rare or not since we have no data either way.

 

Therefore science in general does NOT make that assertion. The theory you quote is a *hypothesis* made by certain scientists that try to convince people they are corrrect. They may have some validity but that doesn't mean it's mainstream.

 

And Bignose made very good points about the statistics. You should consider them more seriously.

 

~mooey

[swansont]

deterministic laws of motion do not even begin to account for all of the specifics of the earths orbit.

 

I didn't say that all elements would be accounted for. I said there are random elements and deterministic processes.

 

i never meant to suggest any outcome is 100% random and that's why you keep misinterpreting what i am saying. the word random is confusing because it has multiple definitions. you are taking a mathematical truth and perverting it to suggest something it was never meant to suggest. by the context of your definition odds and chance do not exist and the probability of every event is 1:1 which we all know is incorrect otherwise everyone on here would be running out to play the lottery.

I don't see where you defined the term to avoid such misinterpretations. Perhaps one issue is you being clearer in what you are claiming.

 

I also said the odds of an event after it happens is 1. e.g. After you win the lottery, your odds of having won is 1.

[Essay]

I am not saying evolution isn't possible. I am saying it's not possible to have happened as a result of chance.

 

The only reason science even holds onto this stupid idea of accidental life is because there is no alternative. Well that's not good enough anymore.

 

 

It's been a while since I followed the beginning of this thread, so I hope this is meaningful:

 

I'm reminded of the idea about love [...can't start it like a car, nor stop it with a bullet...]; but....

 

First, I'd like to point out that the quoted stuff from "Rare Earth" contained many "contingency" words, including at least:

 

5 times for "may be"

2 times for "perhaps"

& once for "can be calamitous"

 

Not that I disagree with the "rare earth" point. Heck! What about the "rare universe" point! Our universe is finely tuned, from the charge and weight of an electron to the strength of gravity, especially to promote life. We are "lucky" to be living in the goldilocks zone of our galaxy also! That makes the "odds against" even greater!

 

How could we be soooo lucky?

I think it is called the anthropic principle, and this should also apply to your point about proteins (& genetics and the virtually infinite odds against spontaneous biocreation).

...or words to that effect.

 

So, what are the odds that just the right protein would form (just by chance) to handle some task important to-- say osmotic regulation?

 

It's between 1/100 and 1/1000, which aren't bad odds overall.

===

 

This is because there is not just one "right protein" to handle the osmotic regulation problem. In fact, there are practically an infinity of ways for that fundamental "osmotic regulation" problem to be handled.

 

And this applies to all of the "unique solutions" (so unique they appear to be designed), which we see here before us.

===

 

See, you need to consider:

 

virtually infinite odds against / practically infinite ways for = "between 1/100 and 1/1000" chances.

 

Does this "equation" make sense for you?

 

~

 

p.s. Life is just God's Way of maximizing Entropy.

...it's like a ball rolling downhill; you can't start it like a car, but you can't stop it any way.

[himoura]

Which is why this analogy is false.

 

Something that is repeatedly told in this post.

 

Progress, at last.

 

 

I didn't chime in with this earlier because it was a bit off the main point, but "Rare Earth" is a hypothesis, not a full fledge theory. It is not substantiated to a level that it explains all we have, it's not mainstream common thinking. As I told you before, and as many others tell you, scientists cannot state whether the earth is rare or not since we have no data either way.

 

Therefore science in general does NOT make that assertion. The theory you quote is a *hypothesis* made by certain scientists that try to convince people they are corrrect. They may have some validity but that doesn't mean it's mainstream.

 

And Bignose made very good points about the statistics. You should consider them more seriously.

 

~mooey

 

 

mooey i have nothing against you at all its just that a lot of my posts you are reading incorrectly. even the post where you warned me the third time i complimented the guy 3 times in that quote ironically enough.

 

another example is when you quoted me about the earth being one solitary body. i wasnt saying there is only one "earth" in the whole universe. heck there could be tons i dont know. my point is that "our" earth is only subject to one set of odds. its the same reason you dont see one guy winning all the time. all those wins dont happen in one place.

 

i am not even of the opinion the earth is super rare either. my mission here is to create a conundrum. i personally think there are a lot of worlds... that there has to be but thats just my personal opinion and not very scientific i suppose. and rare earth theory has less criticisms then inflation if you wanna compare.

 

the poker analogy is sound there is nothing wrong with it. moontanman was exactly right when he said that it was a great analogy.... but he feels i am incorrect. he came up with an extremely clever arguement too to back himself up. eventually he may proove me wrong we will see.

 

as far as swansont point about randomness. this is an extremely confusing arguement and is an area i am currently drilling down on. i have been researching this to make sure i am not speaking incorrectly and also trying to make sure i have my ducks in a row. saying the odds are 1 after you win a lottery is a moot point because millions lost. i admit i didnt understand this comment and mischaracterized his statement myself. i apologize for that.

 

i know you and swansont are smart people your just not taking the time to read what i am writing. this is why you are getting so frustrated with me because you think i am moving the goal post when i am not at all. you are skimming through my posts and not taking it seriously and then trying to rebutt me with a casual retort.

 

and lastly the reason why i didnt take bignose more seriously is because 10^260 is literally beyond human comprehension. 10^11 represents all the stars in our galaxy. 10^80 is estimated to represent all the atoms in all the billions of galaxies out to the edges of the known universe. I asked bignose to go back and read the Crick quote because it is so eloquent i didn't want to butcher it and he still hasnt. he just keeps acting like 10^260 is a small number we can sample and what if something happened 10^245 times every second and stuff like that. i know you guys are smart your just being lazy and not reading man. it can be a little frustrating. please call me out if i am wrong and i am totally cool with that but at least due the due diligence of really reading what i am saying.

[mooeypoo]

I was talking about the "Rare Earth" hypothesis, which you brought up, linked to, and talked about in your post.

 

I'm going to step out of this thread for a bit. It's quite clear I'm not getting through with my points, and you seem to be changing the goal post all the time. It's not about what you have or don't have against me, I have nothing against you either, it's about your seeming insistence to lecture instead of debate.

 

You say X, we answer with Y, and you change the goalpost and claim X is not what you said. It's not just with me, either, so perhaps you should go over your own posts and see if you should make them clearer.

 

~mooey

[himoura]

It's been a while since I followed the beginning of this thread, so I hope this is meaningful:

 

I'm reminded of the idea about love [...can't start it like a car, nor stop it with a bullet...]; but....

 

First, I'd like to point out that the quoted stuff from "Rare Earth" contained many "contingency" words, including at least:

 

5 times for "may be"

2 times for "perhaps"

& once for "can be calamitous"

 

Not that I disagree with the "rare earth" point. Heck! What about the "rare universe" point! Our universe is finely tuned, from the charge and weight of an electron to the strength of gravity, especially to promote life. We are "lucky" to be living in the goldilocks zone of our galaxy also! That makes the "odds against" even greater!

 

How could we be soooo lucky?

I think it is called the anthropic principle, and this should also apply to your point about proteins (& genetics and the virtually infinite odds against spontaneous biocreation).

...or words to that effect.

 

So, what are the odds that just the right protein would form (just by chance) to handle some task important to-- say osmotic regulation?

 

It's between 1/100 and 1/1000, which aren't bad odds overall.

===

 

This is because there is not just one "right protein" to handle the osmotic regulation problem. In fact, there are practically an infinity of ways for that fundamental "osmotic regulation" problem to be handled.

 

And this applies to all of the "unique solutions" (so unique they appear to be designed), which we see here before us.

===

 

See, you need to consider:

 

virtually infinite odds against / practically infinite ways for = "between 1/100 and 1/1000" chances.

 

Does this "equation" make sense for you?

 

~

 

p.s. Life is just God's Way of maximizing Entropy.

...it's like a ball rolling downhill; you can't start it like a car, but you can't stop it any way.

 

i like this post. you are simply hitting me with a counter arguement. thank you. i am reading anthropic principle now. very interesting. it does have a lot of criticism though... let me drill down further and check it out.

 

i am not sure about that equation. do you have a way to prove that there is a protein chain short enough to merit those odds? a chain of 200 is rather small and the odds of that combination is mind numbing. even if you had a chain half the size the odds would still be exponential. is it possible the cells you are referring to do not possess mitochondrial DNA? and therefore dont need protein but never become complex either? i could be wrong... it is late and my eyes hurt from research. i will look into this more.

 

unfortunately this is only the beginning of the origin of life conundrum. i hate to do this because it really does feel like i am moving the goal post but if you didnt know then you need to hear it. there is a major problem with abiogenesis. nucleic acid tape. the messenger RNA. where does it come from? no one knows... some theories have been proposed but nothing widely accepted.

 

read the end of the first paragraph on wiki abiogenesis... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

 

what is the nucleic acid tape? it is literally an instruction set for how to sequence proteins. yes an instruction set as in it literally contains information. a biological information system. i am a network engineer so i have studied information theory. i study coded language and how it is routed through autonomous systems. according to information theory information cannot be classified as either matter or energy. it exists independent of its carrier. so where do the instructions to sequence the chains come from? we just dont know. we know that once the process gets going evolution causes the information to evolve somehow. it has to because one information system has never been shown to change into a different information system. we just dont know how it got started because we have no idea how nucleic acid originates or where it gets its information from.

 

really though this has nothing to do with the theory of variance. i am delighted to speak on it but it really only came up through a weird twist of the conversation.

[Essay]

Thanks, and I think I can see you're framing my "equation" in terms of proteins and their number of amino acids (aa's).

 

My numbers (1/100...) don't refer to the chance of getting a protein with 100 aa's, but to the ratio of...

 

odds against anything /(divided by) the odds in favor anything.

edit: whoops, it should be "odds in favor/odds against, I suppose, but either way....

 

 

My point, about the "infinity of ways" that any problem (like osmotic regulation) could be solved, is meant to suggest many different proteins will naturally serve that function, regardless of whether they are 30 or 300 or 3000 aa's long. Even non-proteins, just simple molecules of the pre-biotic soup or humus (often bound to metals/ions), will contribute to that "osmotic regulation" function.

 

In fact, the odds against finding any molecule that doesn't affect osmotic regulation might be higher than the odds of finding one that does.

===

 

Google the phrase "between the first cell and the last universal ancestor" with the quote marks, to see a discussion on osmotic regulation in these "first cells" in "Bacterial Growth and Form" by A. Koch (re: redox potential & proton-motive force). ...and then find it at a library....

 

I suspect, from your comments, that you think the DNA (or RNA) "tape" must have preceded the first cell. But this book talks about how simple chemistry could drive (like a ball rolling downhill) "cellular" processes such as growth and division, without the need for reproducible "tapes" of information.

 

It's that anthropic principle (the not knowing of all the other possibilities, which also could have worked) that makes us think the odds are "one" against virtual infinity. But really it is more like the odds are "almost infinite" against virtual infinity.

 

So the ratio is (metaphorically) between 1/100 and 1/1000.

===

 

btw,

Is your use of the word "variance" the same as the term that comes from the statistical idea associated with "standard deviation, sigma, and chi-square" type of stuff?

 

~

[Realitycheck]

The first nucleic acid was just real simple, handled real simple instructions, not a whole lot of diversity and detail, but it did it all. Who needs mRNA? But somewhere along the way, it mutates, and makes a copy which starts a basic function similar to mRNA, and changes a little over and over, leaving all the competitors in the dust, till it has a really freaky mutation which causes Siamese twin DNA and the rest is history. A billion years is a long time to deal with lots of trial combinations every second over every square nanometer of the earth.

Okay, so maybe not EVERY nanometer.

 

On second thought, I really like my original DNA first idea better, but its all just speculative, so there you have it.

 

The process that DNA cleaves itself in half to use RNA hinders me from believing in the RNA world.

 

I still have no trouble believing in the develop of nucleic acids into a double helix before it gets entrapped in a lipid vesicle full of cytoplasmic material. Just has to be the right combination to unlock the door and cause replication.

 

Have you heard about how if you have a soup of the four nucleotides, they can combine into all kinds of combinations real easily? (err, actually, now i remember that it was just a little computer simulation that someone devised, but it was really effective in baseless theory)

Edited August 27, 2011 by Realitycheck

[swansont]

saying the odds are 1 after you win a lottery is a moot point because millions lost. i admit i didnt understand this comment and mischaracterized his statement myself. i apologize for that.

It's not a moot point. Millions of planets don't have the right orbital characteristics for life as we know it. There is a distribution of whatever variables are important. So even if the odds of a randomly chosen planet having the desired characteristics is small, we aren't randomly choosing the planet — we're choosing one where life arose. What were the odds? 1. It already happened.

 

If life could only arise on planets in some habitable zone on a planet with a moon and axial tilt, then the probabilities are not independent. Calling it chance or luck is a mischaracterization. Along similar lines, the outcomes of chemistry are not random. Planets do not follow an elliptical orbit by chance or luck.

[John Cuthber]

He did explain where the 10^260 came from

"This is an easy exercise in combinatorials. Suppose the chain is about two hundred amino acids long; this is, if anything, rather less than the average length of proteins of all types. Since we have just twenty possibilities at each place, the number of possibilities is twenty multiplied by itself some two hundred times. This is conveniently written 20^200, that is a one followed by 260 zeros!"

 

He just didn't explain why anyone would care about it. It's the chance of any particular polypeptide being formed by randomly threading 200 amino acids together.

 

Since nobody thinks that's how the peptides are formed, it's not important. It's the same silly straw man argument that the God squad came up with about an explosion in a junk yard creating a jumbo jet.

It's deliberately chosen to give a number so big that, even with a generous estimate of the number of trials, it's still hugely improbably. The maths is just a distraction from the fact that it is a straw man.

The probability that I created life on a wet Wednesday afternoon because I was bored is vanishingly small, but that doesn't matter because nobody seriously believes that am responsible for life. Nobody wastes time doing the arithmetic on how unlikely it is.

 

 

What bothers me more is his persistent refusal to explain why he made something up, attributed it to me , refused to back up or apologise for his assertion then lied about having apologised saying "@John I already did apologize sir!"

[himoura]

It's not a moot point. Millions of planets don't have the right orbital characteristics for life as we know it. There is a distribution of whatever variables are important. So even if the odds of a randomly chosen planet having the desired characteristics is small, we aren't randomly choosing the planet — we're choosing one where life arose. What were the odds? 1. It already happened.

 

If life could only arise on planets in some habitable zone on a planet with a moon and axial tilt, then the probabilities are not independent. Calling it chance or luck is a mischaracterization. Along similar lines, the outcomes of chemistry are not random. Planets do not follow an elliptical orbit by chance or luck.

 

This is a very clever argument.

 

I think it's flawed though because it's like choosing a lottery winner and saying because that person won the odds of winning were one. That's not really accurate of what happened. The odds weren't 1 before they won. The odds became 1 after they one. To imply the odds were 1 Before implies pre destination or fate. Your basically saying that event was pre-determined. The Heisenburg principle of uncertainty plainly states you cannot predict the outcome of a quantum event. It also shows that nature is fundamentally unpredictable on a microscopic scale.

 

I hope I am getting this stuff right. Idk. I am still researching randomness in quantum mechanics and chaos theory and principles of uncertainty. This gets really deep. I am really impressed now with some of these posts. I feel like we are all using our brains.

 

@Jon your right John it is irrelevant and no one should care. I was only using it as an example to show how large the numbers can get. I believe life evolved through natural processes. I apologize for any mischaracterization I made regarding your post. Just remember though. People here haven't exactly been super nice to me. I got pulled into that conversation unwillingly. I'm not trying to strawman anything John I am trying to create a conundrum like Olber's paradox. A puzzle we can all collectively solve that helps us discover the natural process or processes that determine the specifics of our solar system. I didn't really wanna spell it out because then it gets solved much quicker. It's all good though.

 

@realitycheck very good post and informative. I agree with what your saying. There are some theories that try to explain where nucleic acids come from but don't do such a great job. The ones your posting seem a lot better then what I was seeing. I will check into that.

 

@essay very good stuff. You and Swanson are stretching my brain lol. Let me read into what you are saying before I comment. You could totally be right I am not sure.

 

About variance. It's just a poker term. I am not sure how it would apply to mathematics directly. I will try to get that answer for you. Thank you fir helping me to get more specific.

[swansont]

This is a very clever argument.

 

I think it's flawed though because it's like choosing a lottery winner and saying because that person won the odds of winning were one. That's not really accurate of what happened. The odds weren't 1 before they won. The odds became 1 after they one. To imply the odds were 1 Before implies pre destination or fate. Your basically saying that event was pre-determined. The Heisenburg principle of uncertainty plainly states you cannot predict the outcome of a quantum event. It also shows that nature is fundamentally unpredictable on a microscopic scale.

 

But you are basically arguing the opposite, that because the odds are small that the person shouldn't have won the lottery. That winning the lottery is unusual. But the odds of someone winning the lottery are 1 or close to 1 (depending on the specifics). And to take this analogy further, let's say that they choose the 20 year payout. Each check that they get is not a new unlikely event, because they already won the lottery.

 

So, the earth exists, with its orbit, axial tilt, moon, etc. You can't argue probabilities to say that it shouldn't have happened, because it happened. If you want to analyze probabilities beforehand, then you wouldn't choose just one location, you would calculate the odds for all locations.

 

QM does deal in probabilities, but whatever particle is being discussed is still going to exist somewhere. The probabilities of all possible events sums to 1.

[Pincho Paxton]

Earth is a rare winning streak. 1,2,3,4,5,6 on the lotto is 14 million to 1. It's exact alignments that seem to bother you. I don't think that DNA needs exact alignments. Obviously it is reversible.. 6,5,4,3,2,1. Then it is most likely rearrangeable 456123. And then it is also rebuildable in new ways. And then it is possibly formable everywhere in the Universe, and just need the right planet. If you really did calculate this based on Earth the odds would be 1/1. not even 50/50, but 100%.

[Bignose]

and lastly the reason why i didnt take bignose more seriously is because 10^260 is literally beyond human comprehension. 10^11 represents all the stars in our galaxy. 10^80 is estimated to represent all the atoms in all the billions of galaxies out to the edges of the known universe. I asked bignose to go back and read the Crick quote because it is so eloquent i didn't want to butcher it and he still hasnt. he just keeps acting like 10^260 is a small number we can sample and what if something happened 10^245 times every second and stuff like that. i know you guys are smart your just being lazy and not reading man. it can be a little frustrating. please call me out if i am wrong and i am totally cool with that but at least due the due diligence of really reading what i am saying.

 

I do not like being called lazy when you don't even attempt to answer any question I pose, or attempt to understand. You are doing the exact same thing you are accusing us of!

 

How can the sampling rate for a probability NOT be important when trying to estimate how likely it is that an event could have occurred? It is a critical piece of information.

 

10^260 is indeed a big number. But without a rate to compare it to, it is meaningless in isolation. It is beyond comprehension when there it no rate to compare it to. Just stopping at this point and saying "IT'S SO BIIIIIIGGG!!!" is lazy. To be meaningful, let's see how big it is in comparison to how often the sampling occurs. This is YOUR idea, so it is up to YOU to provide details on how you estimate a rate. I actually wouldn't mind seeing details on how 10^260 was calculated either.

 

Himora, the above is trying to help you, to make your numbers MORE meaningful. 10^260 only carries a lot of meaning when it is compared to something else. Calculate that something else, and THEN draw meaning from it.

[himoura]

But you are basically arguing the opposite, that because the odds are small that the person shouldn't have won the lottery. That winning the lottery is unusual. But the odds of someone winning the lottery are 1 or close to 1 (depending on the specifics). And to take this analogy further, let's say that they choose the 20 year payout. Each check that they get is not a new unlikely event, because they already won the lottery.

 

So, the earth exists, with its orbit, axial tilt, moon, etc. You can't argue probabilities to say that it shouldn't have happened, because it happened. If you want to analyze probabilities beforehand, then you wouldn't choose just one location, you would calculate the odds for all locations.

 

QM does deal in probabilities, but whatever particle is being discussed is still going to exist somewhere. The probabilities of all possible events sums to 1.

 

no i am not at all. yes you are correct in your reasoning but your conclusion is wrong contextually because it is being applied incorrectly. you are correct in that its not unusual to win a lottery, this is a brilliant observation. however, if one person keeps winning lotteries than yes that is extremely unusual. the reason the earth is rare is because its winning tons of lotteries not just one. the earth's orbit, axial tilt, moon etc. would represent a multitude of lotteries not just one and there would be many more. if you look at the poker analogy it makes perfect sense. one guy (playing against a poker machine) doesnt win almost all his hands, but those hands are indeed being won all over the world (as moontanman already pointed out to his credit). heck one very skilled player up against a donkey may lose most his hands due to variance for a short amount of time. the only defense against this is to not play and wait for their heater to end. you have to be really careful with determinism and probability because you can reason yourself into saying the probablility of any event is 1:1. which isnt true at all. i know that's not what you are trying to say... but if you are using this as an argument against me you kinda are.

 

this is an extremely engaging debate and i give a lot of credit to all involved. i definitely came to the right place. even if i end up being proved wrong i will gladly sacrifice my pride for the truth. pride earns me nothing... truth on the other hand is enlightenment.

[swansont]

no i am not at all. yes you are correct in your reasoning but your conclusion is wrong contextually because it is being applied incorrectly. you are correct in that its not unusual to win a lottery, this is a brilliant observation. however, if one person keeps winning lotteries than yes that is extremely unusual. the reason the earth is rare is because its winning tons of lotteries not just one. the earth's orbit, axial tilt, moon etc. would represent a multitude of lotteries not just one and there would be many more. if you look at the poker analogy it makes perfect sense. one guy (playing against a poker machine) doesnt win almost all his hands, but those hands are indeed being won all over the world (as moontanman already pointed out to his credit). heck one very skilled player up against a donkey may lose most his hands due to variance for a short amount of time. the only defense against this is to not play and wait for their heater to end. you have to be really careful with determinism and probability because you can reason yourself into saying the probablility of any event is 1:1. which isnt true at all. i know that's not what you are trying to say... but if you are using this as an argument against me you kinda are.

 

this is an extremely engaging debate and i give a lot of credit to all involved. i definitely came to the right place. even if i end up being proved wrong i will gladly sacrifice my pride for the truth. pride earns me nothing... truth on the other hand is enlightenment.

 

But even if having the right orbit and an appropriate axial tilt and a moon is winning the lottery, it happened at least once. It's not as if the right axial tilt has only happened once, and the right orbit, and having a moon, so that having all three is truly amazing. Even with the limited data of our solar system we see that axial tilts and moons are varied. There's been no argument presented that having a different tilt would prevent life from occurring and evolving, and our tilt changes over the course of time, so the exact value is not seemingly critical. Our nascent investigation into extrasolar planets show that solar systems are not unusual. You will need to explain what these "tons of lotteries" are instead of just a cursory hand-wave.

 

I don't know anyone who considers video poker to be real poker. AFAIK they are designed to have payouts less than 100%, just as with all casino games. It's not a good analogy to physical processes that have deterministic components.

[himoura]

But even if having the right orbit and an appropriate axial tilt and a moon is winning the lottery, it happened at least once. It's not as if the right axial tilt has only happened once, and the right orbit, and having a moon, so that having all three is truly amazing. Even with the limited data of our solar system we see that axial tilts and moons are varied. There's been no argument presented that having a different tilt would prevent life from occurring and evolving, and our tilt changes over the course of time, so the exact value is not seemingly critical. Our nascent investigation into extrasolar planets show that solar systems are not unusual. You will need to explain what these "tons of lotteries" are instead of just a cursory hand-wave.

 

I don't know anyone who considers video poker to be real poker. AFAIK they are designed to have payouts less than 100%, just as with all casino games. It's not a good analogy to physical processes that have deterministic components.

 

It's not that video poker is real poker or not. That point is irrelevant. One is subject to odds flatly and the other (skilled) player is not.

 

Your arguements on Newtonian determinism are inspiring. I am drilling down into this very intensely.

 

You are right to suggest that I cannot say something shouldn't (which I haven't so far) have happened. That would be incorrect as it implies it is possible to begin with and as you correctly stated all outcomes equal one. I can however say it couldn't have happened. Here is a decent analogy (the more complicated this gets it's harder to come up with good analogies so please bear with me). I have never gotten a royal flush. I have played for 7 years. I have logged way more then 40k hours but for whatever reason it never happened. If i never pick up another deck of cards it will never happen. That doesnt mean it couldnt have happened or shouldn't have it just means it didnt. Therefore you cannot say that simply because the earth exists it happened by chance because all outcomes equal one. The fact is that you dont know if it's truly possible to begin with, but even if it were possible you still couldn't say it did because there is no way for you to be sure. Using quantum mechanics i think i can work out wether its possible or not but this remains to be seen. Unfortunately we must wait for astrophysics to catch up to our argument and work out the specifics of the lotteries. Only time will tell. It seems we are at somewhat of an impass.

 

There is definitely arguements as to the tilt. It's called obliquity and it is explained in great detail on p. 223 of rare earth. Obliquity is what causes us to have seasons. Not at all suggesting rare earth is the authority on astrophysics I just havent had time to research more sources. Also look into plate tectonics... this is extremely unusual. They act as a thermostat for the planet. Without them our oceans would literally boil or freeze if I read correctly.

 

@realitycheck and essay please forgive me I have a lot going on and I definitely want to get back to u guys. Very good stuff I just need more time to research so I can give u honest info!

 

@paxton your argument seems like it's violating HPU... its not just a 6 figure combination and the timeline is finite. Besides how much time do we need for a process we don't understand to take hold? It's not very scientific to guess or assume.

 

This isn't very scientific at all but I'm going to say it anyway. Has anyone heard of ormes? Can anyone verify if this is true? I am not an expert on metallurgy or geology so i cannot say. If it is true that there are stealth particles that our technology cannot see because they exist out of phase or in phase until heated to a certain degree then maybe this could help explain. There could be whole processes of evolution that are going on right under our noses and we simply can't see them due to technological constraints. I listened to a 17 vid lecture about ormes that blew me away. Not saying it's true at all. I need confirmation. If anyone knows anything about this please post links as it has become relevant.

Edited August 29, 2011 by himoura

[swansont]

There is definitely arguements as to the tilt. It's called obliquity and it is explained in great detail on p. 223 of rare earth. Obliquity is what causes us to have seasons. Not at all suggesting rare earth is the authority on astrophysics I just havent had time to research more sources. Also look into plate tectonics... this is extremely unusual. They act as a thermostat for the planet. Without them our oceans would literally boil or freeze if I read correctly.

 

I'm not sure what the argument is regarding tilt. Ours is 23.4º (currently). Mars is 25.2º. Saturn's is 26.7º. A tilt similar to ours is not unusual even in our own solar system!

 

I'm not sure how you can claim that plate tectonics are unusual. How many planets have been studied? I wouldn't be surprised if plate tectonics were inevitable for a planet like ours.

 

This isn't very scientific at all but I'm going to say it anyway. Has anyone heard of ormes? Can anyone verify if this is true? I am not an expert on metallurgy or geology so i cannot say. If it is true that there are stealth particles that our technology cannot see because they exist out of phase or in phase until heated to a certain degree then maybe this could help explain. There could be whole processes of evolution that are going on right under our noses and we simply can't see them due to technological constraints. I listened to a 17 vid lecture about ormes that blew me away. Not saying it's true at all. I need confirmation. If anyone knows anything about this please post links as it has become relevant.

 

It's utter nonsense. Do a search. There are a couple of threads on it.

[himoura]

Well your last point clearly illustrates why you can't believe anything you see on YouTube. Thanks for the correction. I remained skeptical but my hopes were up I won't lie.

 

To your first point. You need to drill down into those issues. It's not that simple. You should check out rare earth. Those guys aren't hacks at all. They encorporated help from some of the most brilliant minds in the field They explain why obliquity is so important and also why plate tectonics are as well and why they are rare. I posted large excerpts myself but I don't think I should be posting other people's work too much. Go read! lol

 

I need to start to accumulate data now. This is the tough part. I wanna get back to essay and realitycheck and bignose too. Gotta clear a little work out first!!