Life, The Universe, And Everything

[Grandpa Harley]

"The problem is that you look at the probability in a sequential manner, while it is parallel. Many mutations happens simultaneous, and with higher organisms you also have the mixing of different chains of mutations."

 

 

Han,

 

That was the very reasoning that caused The Challenger to explode... it seemed that NASA were combining as an AND (multiplier) not OR (summation). When Feynman did the correct stats, he discovered that a catastrophic failure was a 1 in 17 not 1 in several million. Buddy is doing the same thing... he's using linear not combinatorial increasing numbers... so he's out by exponential factors... or rather stuff he's claiming as linear is exponential and exponential as linear

[BuddyFerris]

You mean about 150-200 billion generations of worms isn't enough? (assuming that a worm can't lay egg until a week after "birth", and the worm came to this world 3 billion years ago.) If an eye requires 300 mutated genes, that still leaves almost a billion generations between each one.

 

You're trying to wow yourself with big numbers and get to some point of "wow, that's so big so it's impossible". And it doesn't work. You're building assumptions on assumptions and create large numbers you can't comprehend.

 

Btw, you brought in the sun and the distance there. I'm sorry. I won't ... if you won't.

C'mon HanS, this is legit in spite of being humorous.

Here's another whack at the problem. Say we've had mammals around for 200 million years, and the ones on track to be homo sapiens amounted to a total of 200 million million plus another 20 billion or so (that's generous). That's around 2x10^15 replications since the beginning. That's short of enough, if random variation and natural selection were going to explain it. Let's round it up to 10^20 replications. That's how many replications it took for the malaria parasite to adapt to chloroquine, a relatively minor adaptation. Now figure out how the homo sapiens wannabe's are going to evolve from thumb-sized rodents to sentient bloggers in the same number of replications. It's way short, followed by several zeros.

 

The humorous version includes the worms; laid end to end, 10^20 one-inch worms would stretch to the sun and back a few dozen times. Stuffed in match boxes at 10 to the box, they'd cover Texas and Oklahoma to a depth of 13 feet, or something like that. Sold for bait at 50 cents a box, you'd have $50000000000000000000.00 and one heck of an explanation due the IRS. The point is that the math were being told describes the process doesn't cover it. It's a fun discussion, but it's not going to win any medals.

Again, I'm not deeply invested in the issue, but you kinda want these things to be honest and reasonable.

Buddy

[Mankey]

You mean about 150-200 billion generations of worms isn't enough? (assuming that a worm can't lay egg until a week after "birth", and the worm came to this world 3 billion years ago.) If an eye requires 300 mutated genes, that still leaves almost a billion generations between each one.

 

You're trying to wow yourself with big numbers and get to some point of "wow, that's so big so it's impossible". And it doesn't work. You're building assumptions on assumptions and create large numbers you can't comprehend.

 

Btw, you brought in the sun and the distance there. I'm sorry. I won't ... if you won't.

C'mon HanS, this is legit in spite of being humorous.

Here's another whack at the problem. Say we've had mammals around for 200 million years, and the ones on track to be homo sapiens amounted to a total of 200 million million plus another 20 billion or so (that's generous). That's around 2x10^15 replications since the beginning. That's short of enough, if random variation and natural selection were going to explain it. Let's round it up to 10^20 replications. That's how many replications it took for the malaria parasite to adapt to chloroquine, a relatively minor adaptation. Now figure out how the homo sapiens wannabe's are going to evolve from thumb-sized rodents to sentient bloggers in the same number of replications. It's way short, followed by several zeros.

 

The humorous version includes the worms; laid end to end, 10^20 one-inch worms would stretch to the sun and back a few dozen times. Stuffed in match boxes at 10 to the box, they'd cover Texas and Oklahoma to a depth of 13 feet, or something like that. Sold for bait at 50 cents a box, you'd have $50000000000000000000.00 and one heck of an explanation due the IRS. The point is that the math were being told describes the process doesn't cover it. It's a fun discussion, but it's not going to win any medals.

Again, I'm not deeply invested in the issue, but you kinda want these things to be honest and reasonable.

Buddy

This is in no way an argument for a Creator...

[BuddyFerris]

This is in no way an argument for a Creator...

Of course not. It's just an observation on an offered scientific explanation that doesn't seem to fit the offered process for mutation and selection.

Buddy

[Mankey]

You mean about 150-200 billion generations of worms isn't enough? (assuming that a worm can't lay egg until a week after "birth", and the worm came to this world 3 billion years ago.) If an eye requires 300 mutated genes, that still leaves almost a billion generations between each one.

 

You're trying to wow yourself with big numbers and get to some point of "wow, that's so big so it's impossible". And it doesn't work. You're building assumptions on assumptions and create large numbers you can't comprehend.

 

Btw, you brought in the sun and the distance there. I'm sorry. I won't ... if you won't.

C'mon HanS, this is legit in spite of being humorous.

Here's another whack at the problem. Say we've had mammals around for 200 million years, and the ones on track to be homo sapiens amounted to a total of 200 million million plus another 20 billion or so (that's generous). That's around 2x10^15 replications since the beginning. That's short of enough, if random variation and natural selection were going to explain it. Let's round it up to 10^20 replications. That's how many replications it took for the malaria parasite to adapt to chloroquine, a relatively minor adaptation. Now figure out how the homo sapiens wannabe's are going to evolve from thumb-sized rodents to sentient bloggers in the same number of replications. It's way short, followed by several zeros.

 

The humorous version includes the worms; laid end to end, 10^20 one-inch worms would stretch to the sun and back a few dozen times. Stuffed in match boxes at 10 to the box, they'd cover Texas and Oklahoma to a depth of 13 feet, or something like that. Sold for bait at 50 cents a box, you'd have $50000000000000000000.00 and one heck of an explanation due the IRS. The point is that the math were being told describes the process doesn't cover it. It's a fun discussion, but it's not going to win any medals.

Again, I'm not deeply invested in the issue, but you kinda want these things to be honest and reasonable.

Buddy

I will say that the only difference between you and a Free Thinker is theism.....

 

I do not know that much about evolutionary theory and I have learned a great deal in your thread here. Thank you.

[Mankey]

This is in no way an argument for a Creator...

Of course not. It's just an observation on an offered scientific explanation that doesn't seem to fit the offered process for mutation and selection.

Buddy

Cool. hehe.

 

I have no questions at this time.

 

So much to learn, understand and remember....

[Ouroboros]

That was the very reasoning that caused The Challenger to explode... it seemed that NASA were combining as an AND (multiplier) not OR (summation). When Feynman did the correct stats, he discovered that a catastrophic failure was a 1 in 17 not 1 in several million. Buddy is doing the same thing... he's using linear not combinatorial increasing numbers... so he's out by exponential factors... or rather stuff he's claiming as linear is exponential and exponential as linear

yeah, I know, and it bugs me when people do that. And on top of it all, most numbers are based on some basic assumptions and usually they make the calculations on severely reduced number of parameters. It's like that number at the weather forecast, "70% chance of rain"... yeah, right. Either it will rain or it won't.

[freeman]

Question. Since, statistically, chances of the precise sperm meeting the precise ovum that produces you, or me, is of the same order of magnitude as two atoms of Oxygen producing one atom of Gold at STP (273.15 K and one atmosphere of pressure) is it chance or design?

 

Nice Gramps!

 

Buddy, since you love to dwell on statistical improbabilities, try this one. The chance that some rabbi, named jesus, was nailed to a cross and rose from the dead three days later is 1 billion raised to 100,000,000 trillion! Basically, the chance of jesus is zillch!

 

You see, to some of us jesus is not real, never was and never will be. A complete myth, statisically impossible! His only apperence is in a book which is fraught with inconsistancies, improbabilities and impossibilities. Yet, Buddy you still have "faith" in something that is impossible to reconcile with the real world!

[Mankey]

Question. Since, statistically, chances of the precise sperm meeting the precise ovum that produces you, or me, is of the same order of magnitude as two atoms of Oxygen producing one atom of Gold at STP (273.15 K and one atmosphere of pressure) is it chance or design?

 

Nice Gramps!

 

Buddy, since you love to dwell on statistical improbabilities, try this one. The chance that some rabbi, named jesus, was nailed to a cross and rose from the dead three days later is 1 billion raised to 100,000,000 trillion! Basically, the chance of jesus is zillch!

 

You see, to some of us jesus is not real, never was and never will be. A complete myth, statisically impossible! His only apperence is in a book which is fraught with inconsistancies, improbabilities and impossibilities. Yet, Buddy you still have "faith" in something that is impossible to reconcile with the real world!

Christians live by faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for - evidence of things not seen. Christians are to live by Faith

 

I hope Buddy is unsatisfied.

 

Special pleading:

 

To the superstitious mind reason is the mistress that is kept separate from the wife ( religious beliefs). You want both, but they must never meet. They cannot. Otherwise you would have to get a divorce...

 

-Mankey

[Grandpa Harley]

You mean about 150-200 billion generations of worms isn't enough? (assuming that a worm can't lay egg until a week after "birth", and the worm came to this world 3 billion years ago.) If an eye requires 300 mutated genes, that still leaves almost a billion generations between each one.

 

You're trying to wow yourself with big numbers and get to some point of "wow, that's so big so it's impossible". And it doesn't work. You're building assumptions on assumptions and create large numbers you can't comprehend.

 

Btw, you brought in the sun and the distance there. I'm sorry. I won't ... if you won't.

C'mon HanS, this is legit in spite of being humorous.

Here's another whack at the problem. Say we've had mammals around for 200 million years, and the ones on track to be homo sapiens amounted to a total of 200 million million plus another 20 billion or so (that's generous). That's around 2x10^15 replications since the beginning. That's short of enough, if random variation and natural selection were going to explain it. Let's round it up to 10^20 replications. That's how many replications it took for the malaria parasite to adapt to chloroquine, a relatively minor adaptation. Now figure out how the homo sapiens wannabe's are going to evolve from thumb-sized rodents to sentient bloggers in the same number of replications. It's way short, followed by several zeros.

 

The humorous version includes the worms; laid end to end, 10^20 one-inch worms would stretch to the sun and back a few dozen times. Stuffed in match boxes at 10 to the box, they'd cover Texas and Oklahoma to a depth of 13 feet, or something like that. Sold for bait at 50 cents a box, you'd have $50000000000000000000.00 and one heck of an explanation due the IRS. The point is that the math were being told describes the process doesn't cover it. It's a fun discussion, but it's not going to win any medals.

Again, I'm not deeply invested in the issue, but you kinda want these things to be honest and reasonable.

Buddy

I've realised what you're doing...

 

A train leaves New York, heading for Denver at 44mph. It has a 15mph head wind. At the same time, an identical train heads from Denver, bound for NYC at 55mph. It has 12 mph tail wind. So, how long would it take for 5 men to dig a ditch 12 yards long and 2 yards deep?

 

You, sir are a moron and troll. You have no grasp of the mathematics involved, and have little or no interest. You a grinning loon who prevers high falutin' language rather than addressing a point. It would appear that your point here is just to be evasive.

 

 

 

 

So, Care to tell us what your point is?

 

How about, avoiding self satified gloating, you explain to us poor deluded souls who deny a gawd WHY you, in your omniscient wisdom, claim the maths doesn't work?

[Ouroboros]

It's impossible to roll a die and get 100 straight 1's... or should I say it's a low probability, but yet possible?

 

Well, if I have 100 dice and roll them, is it the same probability?

 

Then if I take 1,000,000,000 dice and roll them, what are the chances I get 100 of them as 1's?

[Mankey]

It's impossible to roll a die and get 100 straight 1's... or should I say it's a low probability, but yet possible?

 

Well, if I have 100 dice and roll them, is it the same probability?

 

Then if I take 1,000,000,000 dice and roll them, what are the chances I get 100 of them as 1's?

Hehe.

 

 

To exist is to exist as something to have a nature...Law of identity.

 

Everything acts according to its nature.....and is limited to that...but everything is interacting.

 

I sense some how that the dice are rigged a little bit....but not in the way that a theist would think. ( i.e. Creator) It has to do with EVERYTHINGS identities...natures interacting.....complexity from simplicity. Flip a coin and there are variables involved...not true randomness....a thing has identity because of its limitations...its nature.

 

Existence is bazzar.......but I only hold to what I can understand and posit nothing that can't survive occams razor.

 

God has no limitations and so can not have any identity...God is incoherent...contradictory. But as far as we know matter and energy exists and that everything complex is made of these.

 

Existence as it is is very strange to me.....but it is our lot in life to stick to what we can know in making inferences from what we know.

 

Whatever happens, panned out -Skip N Church.

 

 

I hope to go all the way in math...but right now I don't know jack. I like to put my mind noise in threads so I can read it. hehe.

 

I enjoyed reading this thread. Thank you all.

[webmdave]

This is in no way an argument for a Creator...

Of course not. It's just an observation on an offered scientific explanation that doesn't seem to fit the offered process for mutation and selection.

Buddy

 

 

[webmdave]

Do you know what the odds are of winning the lottery?

 

IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO WIN THE LOTTERY!

 

You mean there are people who have actually randomly won the lottery?

 

Well, the odds are against it, so that means it's impossible.

 

Besides, my pastor (who makes gold flakes fall from the sky) says that no one has ever randomly won the lottery. Lottery winnings are designed gifts from God.

[BuddyFerris]

It's impossible to roll a die and get 100 straight 1's... or should I say it's a low probability, but yet possible?

 

Well, if I have 100 dice and roll them, is it the same probability?

 

Then if I take 1,000,000,000 dice and roll them, what are the chances I get 100 of them as 1's?

HanS,

You've asked the right question; now, count your dice; you need the 100 1's but you don't have 1,000,000,000 dice to make the odds work out. That's the problem.

Buddy

[BuddyFerris]

I've realised what you're doing...

A train leaves New York, heading for Denver ... 12 yards long and 2 yards deep?

 

You, sir are a moron and troll. You have no grasp of the mathematics involved, and have little or no interest. You a grinning loon who prevers high falutin' language rather than addressing a point. It would appear that your point here is just to be evasive.

 

So, Care to tell us what your point is?

 

How about, avoiding self satified gloating, you explain to us poor deluded souls who deny a gawd WHY you, in your omniscient wisdom, claim the maths doesn't work?

Grandpa,

While I have only a little insight into the individuals here, I hadn't thought of any as poor deluded souls or in any similar light. Exchanges here have been enlightening and as I have said elsewhere, these conversations are more valuable to me than the easy affirmation of folks who agree with me. I would be a mean-spirited ass indeed if my reason for hanging around here were to bait and torment. That's not on my agenda.

 

I was Navy for 25 years, and loved (almost) every minute of it. I have friends who didn't grow up in the same town I did. So, here I am, and since you asked why, that's why; another foreign place with fascinating people.

 

I'm reading some of the literature available on the historicity of Jesus at the (pointed) suggestion of a fellow here; bright guy, wants me to do some homework before continuing a conversation on whether or not Jesus actually existed. Before stumbling on this site, I wasn't aware that there was a legitimate debate on the subject.

 

At work, we disagree pretty aggressively as a matter of policy. We designed our group that way from the beginning; helps us avoid stupid mistakes in production and Challenger-esque catastrophes in the field. Every assertion without foundation is questioned. Every module is tested with real-world data. Tenacity is a virtue. Canaveral is one of our sites, so we're careful.

 

If the conversation is without use to you, feel free to leave me to correspond with myself. I am not interested in gamesmanship; I don't need to win; I do attempt to understand. As one here said, it's been good, I've learned some things.

 

Hope your week goes well; mine begins in a couple of hours and I'm way behind after a week's vacation.

Buddy

 

P.S. Re your NY train question, the answer is 6, but we never found out what happened to the other shoe.

[Mankey]

This is in no way an argument for a Creator...

Of course not. It's just an observation on an offered scientific explanation that doesn't seem to fit the offered process for mutation and selection.

Buddy

 

 

He can not find fault in his marriage, he must treat reason as some cheap whore in order to rationalize his marriage to Jesus. Reason MUST be at fault and not his marriage. He likes to flirt with reason even though he is a married man. Even if he could demonstrate a problem in evolutionary theory this would only be an ad hoc attempt to rationalize a belief that is based on argument from ignorance.....except that proving evolutionary theory wrong is a bungled attempt at ad hocism. hehe.

 

Maybe it is only a matter of time. He has already flirted with evolutionary theory. If he is not careful he might come to understand her better.

 

I hope he gets a divorce real soon.

[dano]

Buddy said:

"Dang, Grandpa. I think I inappropriately attributed an earlier post to you. My apologies. Yep, it was Dano who challenged the math."

 

 

Dano replies:

No it wernt asshole. You are loosing it Buddy!

Dan, Agnostic

[dano]

You mean about 150-200 billion generations of worms isn't enough? (assuming that a worm can't lay egg until a week after "birth", and the worm came to this world 3 billion years ago.) If an eye requires 300 mutated genes, that still leaves almost a billion generations between each one.

 

You're trying to wow yourself with big numbers and get to some point of "wow, that's so big so it's impossible". And it doesn't work. You're building assumptions on assumptions and create large numbers you can't comprehend.

 

Btw, you brought in the sun and the distance there. I'm sorry. I won't ... if you won't.

C'mon HanS, this is legit in spite of being humorous.

Here's another whack at the problem. Say we've had mammals around for 200 million years, and the ones on track to be homo sapiens amounted to a total of 200 million million plus another 20 billion or so (that's generous). That's around 2x10^15 replications since the beginning. That's short of enough, if random variation and natural selection were going to explain it. Let's round it up to 10^20 replications. That's how many replications it took for the malaria parasite to adapt to chloroquine, a relatively minor adaptation. Now figure out how the homo sapiens wannabe's are going to evolve from thumb-sized rodents to sentient bloggers in the same number of replications. It's way short, followed by several zeros.

 

The humorous version includes the worms; laid end to end, 10^20 one-inch worms would stretch to the sun and back a few dozen times. Stuffed in match boxes at 10 to the box, they'd cover Texas and Oklahoma to a depth of 13 feet, or something like that. Sold for bait at 50 cents a box, you'd have $50000000000000000000.00 and one heck of an explanation due the IRS. The point is that the math were being told describes the process doesn't cover it. It's a fun discussion, but it's not going to win any medals.

Again, I'm not deeply invested in the issue, but you kinda want these things to be honest and reasonable.

Buddy

I've realised what you're doing...

 

A train leaves New York, heading for Denver at 44mph. It has a 15mph head wind. At the same time, an identical train heads from Denver, bound for NYC at 55mph. It has 12 mph tail wind. So, how long would it take for 5 men to dig a ditch 12 yards long and 2 yards deep?

 

You, sir are a moron and troll. You have no grasp of the mathematics involved, and have little or no interest. You a grinning loon who prevers high falutin' language rather than addressing a point. It would appear that your point here is just to be evasive.

 

 

 

 

So, Care to tell us what your point is?

 

How about, avoiding self satified gloating, you explain to us poor deluded souls who deny a gawd WHY you, in your omniscient wisdom, claim the maths doesn't work?

[dano]

Grandpa said:

"You, sir are a moron and troll. You have no grasp of the mathematics involved, and have little or no interest. You a grinning loon who prefers high falutin' language rather than addressing a point. It would appear that your point here is just to be evasive."

 

Dano:

The high falutin' language wouldn't be so bad if it were not for the fact that plain ole English would have said it better!

Dan, and Abe Lincoln, Agnostic, and Deist

[freeman]

You see, to some of us jesus is not real, never was and never will be. A complete myth, statisically impossible! His only apperence is in a book which is fraught with inconsistancies, improbabilities and impossibilities. Yet, Buddy you still have "faith" in something that is impossible to reconcile with the real world!

 

Jesus = statistical improbability!

 

I'm reading some of the literature available on the historicity of Jesus at the (pointed) suggestion of a fellow here; bright guy, wants me to do some homework before continuing a conversation on whether or not Jesus actually existed. Before stumbling on this site, I wasn't aware that there was a legitimate debate on the subject.

 

Who was it, Dave8 or boomslang? Legitimate debate is putting it mildly. The christian theologians are being taken to task as in new assholes are being riped!

 

Buddy said:

"Dang, Grandpa. I think I inappropriately attributed an earlier post to you. My apologies. Yep, it was Dano who challenged the math."

 

 

Dano replies:

No it wernt asshole. You are loosing it Buddy!

Dan, Agnostic

 

I think that would have been me!

 

Your life is filled with certainty until you open your mind and read dissenting views! When you read views that are in conflict with your own, there is knowledge to be gained. Even if you still do not change your mind, you have gained insight to another point of view! Censorship, even self imposed censorship, is dangerous and christians are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of censorship!

[Ouroboros]

It's impossible to roll a die and get 100 straight 1's... or should I say it's a low probability, but yet possible?

 

Well, if I have 100 dice and roll them, is it the same probability?

 

Then if I take 1,000,000,000 dice and roll them, what are the chances I get 100 of them as 1's?

HanS,

You've asked the right question; now, count your dice; you need the 100 1's but you don't have 1,000,000,000 dice to make the odds work out. That's the problem.

Buddy

You know, I'm going to answer you later. I have to go back to your sources and really confirm this, but I still think there's something completely wrong with your numbers. Mutations are not a linear process and you can't calculate probability as such. It's a conditional, multi-networked, process, and something is just completely off here. But I need to research your numbers and sources to point to the error.

 

Btw, does your calculations include mutations through retro virus?

 

And if mutations are so rare, where does cancer come from?

 

 

But now to change the direction just a bit, and I'll get back to your numbers later.

 

What are the chances that two species share the same ERV? In the light of statistics, and the chance for mutations, for two different species to share the same ERV it would be impossible unless they were related. What do you think?

 

(Sorry for my grammar and spelling... it's bad on a good day, but terrible before my first cup of coffee.)

[freeman]

If you were to use the 100 straight rolls to achieve all 1's your chances increase if you alter the dice, like a mutation, so that everytime you roll and it is not a 1, that number is then removed from probability. As these numbers are removed due to mutations, the odds are then increased and the likely hood eventually becomes 100% of rolling 100 straight 1's.

 

Make sense?

 

Evolution of the dice!

[Ouroboros]

If you were to use the 100 straight rolls to achieve all 1's your chances increase if you alter the dice, like a mutation, so that everytime you roll and it is not a 1, that number is then removed from probability. As these numbers are removed due to mutations, the odds are then increased and the likely hood eventually becomes 100% of rolling 100 straigth 1's.

 

Make sense?

 

Evolution of the dice!

Right. Take 100 dice. Roll them. For each "1", take that dice and change one of the numbers on the other side of those to also show "1". (that's our little survival, and better reproduction of the most fit).

 

Roll again. For each "1", do the same thing again. Take those and change a side to also show "1".

 

I can promise you that very soon you will easily roll 50 "1"-s. And not longer after that, you have over 75% "1"-s each time you roll. And it won't take a life time to do this experiment, probably just a few hours one Sunday afternoon.

 

So what is the probability in a changing system like this?

[freeman]

If your mutation does not favor 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6, then you will be left with 1 after only 5 generations!