Agnosticism and Intelligent Design

[excreationist]

....That figure of 10^40,000 can be seen here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle#Rejection_of_Earth-based_abiogenesis

Since he is a "Sir" I'd assume it is a reasonably informed guess.

The guy who played Baldrick on the Blackadder series is a 'Sir'.

What type of argument is that? Argument by Blackadder joke? I'd assume the knighthood was partly due to him "formulating the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis".

The universe isn't a random scattering of atoms. The universe has structure.

I wrote:
"I'm not saying that abiogenesis is purely random but there would be an aspect to it that requires chance so that sometimes it doesn't happen"

Life didn't arise because a chance clump of atoms in the universe happened to be the right pattern.

Whether or not an arrangement of atoms is classified as "life" can be seen as a pattern.

It's as crazy as suggesting that if I drop a rock, the chances of all those atoms falling at once is tiny, so the rock should just float

Gravity exists.

Yes.

If you start a dozen billion years ago with some fairly randomly distributed hydrogen gas, the action of gravity alone causes stars, galaxies and ultimately heavy elements, supernovae, Earthlike planets, and the starting conditions for abiogenesis.

And a pack of cards is the starting condition for a specific arrangement of cards to exist.

Einstein said that God doesn't play dice. I can assure you that the universe doesn't shuffle cards. Gravity rigs the deck. Life isn't unlikely, it's inevitable.

Why did you ignore my analogy about a pack of 100 cards? I was talking about specific numbers. You just assert that life is inevitable.

If you're going to use argument from authority, then what about this:
Stephen Hawking said: "Not only does God definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen."

 

[bilby]

What type of argument is that? Argument by Blackadder joke? I'd assume the knighthood was partly due to him "formulating the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis".

The universe isn't a random scattering of atoms. The universe has structure.

I wrote:
"I'm not saying that abiogenesis is purely random but there would be an aspect to it that requires chance so that sometimes it doesn't happen"

Life didn't arise because a chance clump of atoms in the universe happened to be the right pattern.

Whether or not an arrangement of atoms is classified as "life" can be seen as a pattern.

It's as crazy as suggesting that if I drop a rock, the chances of all those atoms falling at once is tiny, so the rock should just float

Gravity exists.

Yes.

If you start a dozen billion years ago with some fairly randomly distributed hydrogen gas, the action of gravity alone causes stars, galaxies and ultimately heavy elements, supernovae, Earthlike planets, and the starting conditions for abiogenesis.

And a pack of cards is the starting condition for a specific arrangement of cards to exist.

Einstein said that God doesn't play dice. I can assure you that the universe doesn't shuffle cards. Gravity rigs the deck. Life isn't unlikely, it's inevitable.

Why did you ignore my analogy about a pack of 100 cards? I was talking about specific numbers. You just assert that life is inevitable.

I ignored it because it's a shit analogy.

If you want to understand how life might arise, stop playing poker, and start looking at organic chemistry.

 

[excreationist]

....I ignored it because it's a shit analogy.

If you want to understand how life might arise, stop playing poker, and start looking at organic chemistry.

So you're saying that it is impossible to come up with any kind of estimate concerning the odds of abiogenesis say within an earth-like planet within 4 billion years? If there was a figure then I could say how inevitable that seems.

It seems it is a common idea to think that life is very common in the universe. BTW do you think that there are multiple universes? I only had a belief in multiple universes in order to explain how unlikely I thought abiogenesis was.

About that 10^40,000 figure again: Hoyle "...calculated that the chance of obtaining the required set of enzymes for even the simplest living cell without panspermia..."

 

[bilby]

....I ignored it because it's a shit analogy.

If you want to understand how life might arise, stop playing poker, and start looking at organic chemistry.

So you're saying that it is impossible to come up with any kind of estimate concerning the odds of abiogenesis say within an earth-like planet within 4 billion years? If there was a figure then I could say how inevitable that seems.

It seems it is a common idea to think that life is very common in the universe. BTW do you think that there are multiple universes? I only had a belief in multiple universes in order to explain how unlikely I thought abiogenesis was.

It's impossible to come up with odds when you have only one data point.

But having studied biochemistry and molecular biology, my educated guess is that life is almost inevitable within a billion years on a planet with permanent liquid water.

Enceladus will be interesting.

I strongly suspect that life without liquid water is FAR less likely; Hence it's absence (as far as we know) elsewhere in the Solar System.

And I don't see much value in speculation about multiple universes.

 

[excreationist]

....We have managed to map the entire brain of the nematode worm in 2012, C Elegans, and that's gone swimingly. We now have simulated worms that behave exactly like the real worm would. I think that's how we're going to crack this. Figuring out how evolution did it, step by step.

Ok. I guess your standard of what it means to have an understanding of the human brain is a lot higher than mine...

 

[excreationist]

....I ignored it because it's a shit analogy.

If you want to understand how life might arise, stop playing poker, and start looking at organic chemistry.

So you're saying that it is impossible to come up with any kind of estimate concerning the odds of abiogenesis say within an earth-like planet within 4 billion years? If there was a figure then I could say how inevitable that seems.

It seems it is a common idea to think that life is very common in the universe. BTW do you think that there are multiple universes? I only had a belief in multiple universes in order to explain how unlikely I thought abiogenesis was.

It's impossible to come up with odds when you have only one data point.

But having studied biochemistry and molecular biology,

And here I was thinking to myself I was smart for finding out the value for 100!

....my educated guess is that life is almost inevitable within a billion years on a planet with permanent liquid water.

Enceladus will be interesting.

I strongly suspect that life without liquid water is FAR less likely; Hence it's absence (as far as we know) elsewhere in the Solar System.

Hopefully there's other intelligent life in the galaxy... (I like Rick and Morty)

And I don't see much value in speculation about multiple universes.

Well if life is inevitable on many planets then I don't need a belief in multiple universes to believe in naturalism.

 

[DrZoidberg]

....We have managed to map the entire brain of the nematode worm in 2012, C Elegans, and that's gone swimingly. We now have simulated worms that behave exactly like the real worm would. I think that's how we're going to crack this. Figuring out how evolution did it, step by step.

Ok. I guess your standard of what it means to have an understanding of the human brain is a lot higher than mine...

What it means to understand of something is the same for everything. If you understand something that means that you can use your imagination to predict how something will behave in the future, in any given situation. If we can't then our model of understanding it is incomplete.

We can use psychological testing to make a statistical breakdown of how humans behave. Humans are predictable in many situations. So we have a way of measuring whether or not we have in fact cracked the secrets of our brain. So far no ANN has behaved as a human has. That's just a fact.

The latest in neurology is embodied cognition. Which hypothesises that the entire body is part of how we form the mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition

The biggest hurdle to discussing this is that the brain is incredibly complicated. It makes it difficult to phrase it into pithy forum posts to catch what is going on. I dated a neurologist a couple of years ago and she did cutting edge research on embodied cognition. She was way smarter than me and struggled with understanding her own research. Everybody on her team seemed to be geniuses, yet had lively discussions about interpretations. This is very hard

 

[excreationist]

.....The latest in neurology is embodied cognition. Which hypothesises that the entire body is part of how we form the mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition....

"....The modern version depends on insights drawn from recent research in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, dynamical systems, artificial intelligence, robotics, animal cognition, plant cognition and neurobiology."

Thanks for the info. I'm somewhat familiar with most of those things.

I see Turing said:
"It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. That process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc."

Recently I'd argued with a guy who was knowledgeable about AI that a self-aware AI should be raised like an infant and child so that it develops its own understanding of the world. He was saying that it would be inefficient but then I said that after it was trained it could be cloned.

 

[DrZoidberg]

.....The latest in neurology is embodied cognition. Which hypothesises that the entire body is part of how we form the mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition....

"....The modern version depends on insights drawn from recent research in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, dynamical systems, artificial intelligence, robotics, animal cognition, plant cognition and neurobiology."

Thanks for the info. I'm somewhat familiar with most of those things.

I see Turing said:
"It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. That process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc."

When Turing talked about AI he never meant it thinking like a human. The ultimate goal for him with AI was creating a machine good enough to fool a human into thinking it was smart. It's a different kind of project.

Alan Turing is my biggest hero btw. Computers is my field of study.

Recently I'd argued with a guy who was knowledgeable about AI that a self-aware AI should be raised like an infant and child so that it develops its own understanding of the world. He was saying that it would be inefficient but then I said that after it was trained it could be cloned.

Yes, That's the nice things about computers. It's super easy to copy them.

BTW, the goal with neural nets isn't to copy how humans think. That would be worthless. Human thinking is fast and sloppy. If we create an AI it would be better to aim for fast and accurate. That way it can actually help us, other than just increase noise. All you need to do is open a newspaper to see the problems with human thinking.

 

[Keith&Co.]

In part of this thread I'm talking about the odds of evolution or abiogenesis.

the odds really don't matter, though.

Pick any number you want.
A million to one.
A trillion to one.
One point seven zero one gabbazillion to one against life developing under certain conditions.

Then compare that number to the number of planets in the galaxy. And the number of galaxies in the universe. How's your odds stand up?

I mean if you give something one in a million odds, and there are a billion opportunities for the event, it becomes LIKELY to happen a thousand times, no?

Some say that according to string theory there could be 10⁵⁰⁰ universes. Let's assume that like ours there are about 10⁸⁰ atoms and that there were 20 billion years (about 10²⁰ seconds). Say that every second in each atom in each universe there was a combination - I think that's 10⁶⁰⁰ combinations. Even if each combination was 10¹⁰⁰ times per second per atom then that's 10⁷⁰⁰ combinations. Sir Fred Hoyle was talking about 1 in 10^40,000 odds. That isn't inevitable if there are only 10⁷⁰⁰ combinations.

So, you pull numbers out of your ass until you get odds that support your side of the argument.
You should remove the 'ex' from your login ID.

WHY do we care about other dimensions, though?

 

[Keith&Co.]

What type of argument is that? Argument by Blackadder joke?

You offered an argument from respect for authority based on the authority being knighted.
He pointed out that your fallacy was a fallacy.
It appears that you do not respect his authority on that observation.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Oh, wait, I get it.
You're looking at everything from the personal point of view. "_I_ am here, what are the odds of that?"

The evolution POV is more: "Something is somewhere. Could have been somewhere else, could have been something else."

So, you're kinda right. YOU, Creationist, are not mathematically inevitable. Many, many, many random chances were involved in the chain of events leading to You being Here.
But that doesn't mean that the only explanation for You being Here is that someone WANTED that outcome, and jiggered the dice, or rigged the game, to lead to that outcome.

 

[bilby]

The chances of me winning the lottery this week are about 45 million to one.

However that doesn't mean that it's likely that the winnings will go unclaimed. The probability that someone will win is about 2 to 1 - The jackpot gets won about 25 times a year. Some weeks there are several winners who share the jackpot.

The chances of there being a hundred lottery winners in a room full of random people is minuscule. But the odds of finding that many at the fifteenth annual lottery jackpot winners reunion and convention is far higher - you would be surprised if you didn't.

We are only able to have this debate because we are here. It's crazy to discuss how unlikely it is that we are here; If we weren't here, a bunch of different people would be here having the exact same debate about how incredibly implausible their existence was.

 

[excreationist]

What type of argument is that? Argument by Blackadder joke?

You offered an argument from respect for authority based on the authority being knighted.
He pointed out that your fallacy was a fallacy.
It appears that you do not respect his authority on that observation.

I didn't know what kind of expert bilby was at that point. bilby also said "Einstein said that God doesn't play dice" (based on an authority).

I said:
"If you're going to use argument from authority, then what about this:
Stephen Hawking said: "Not only does God definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen." "

 

[excreationist]

....It's crazy to discuss how unlikely it is that we are here; If we weren't here, a bunch of different people would be here having the exact same debate about how incredibly implausible their existence was.

But there's a difference between us being the only intelligent life in the universe vs a common belief that there could be quite of other intelligent life in the universe.

 

[bilby]

What type of argument is that? Argument by Blackadder joke?

You offered an argument from respect for authority based on the authority being knighted.
He pointed out that your fallacy was a fallacy.
It appears that you do not respect his authority on that observation.

I didn't know what kind of expert bilby was at that point. bilby also said "Einstein said that God doesn't play dice" (based on an authority).

I said:
"If you're going to use argument from authority, then what about this:
Stephen Hawking said: "Not only does God definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen." "

Attribution of a quote is not an argument from authority, unless you claim that the identity of the originator somehow renders the quote true.

Your statement "Since he is a "Sir" I'd assume it is a reasonably informed guess" is, however, a perfect example of the fallacy.

Being a "Sir" doesn't support a person's argument, and tells us exactly nothing about how reasonable or informed his guesses might be.

 

[excreationist]

....You should remove the 'ex' from your login ID....

If evolution or abiogenesis was intelligently directed I think it might be due to intelligence from the future or in a simulation. I'm not sure that is classified as being a creationist. I'm starting to believe again what naturalists here believe anyway.

WHY do we care about other dimensions, though?

It makes highly unlikely things inevitable.

 

[bilby]

....You should remove the 'ex' from your login ID....

If evolution or abiogenesis was intelligently directed I think it might be due to intelligence from the future or in a simulation. I'm not sure that is classified as being a creationist. I'm starting to believe again what naturalists here believe anyway.

WHY do we care about other dimensions, though?

It makes highly unlikely things inevitable.

Highly unlikely things are inevitable anyway.

Someone wins the lottery almost every week. No extra dimensions required.

 

[Keith&Co.]

What type of argument is that? Argument by Blackadder joke?

You offered an argument from respect for authority based on the authority being knighted.
He pointed out that your fallacy was a fallacy.
It appears that you do not respect his authority on that observation.

I didn't know what kind of expert bilby was at that point. bilby also said "Einstein said that God doesn't play dice" (based on an authority).

Doesn't matter what kind of expert he is.
He wasn't offeringbthat quote as an argument.
And this is all part of a completely different post, anyway

I said:
"If you're going to use argument from authority, then what about this:
Stephen Hawking said: "Not only does God definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen." "

demonstrating that you do not know ehat an Argument by Respect For Authority is... but then, up above, you almost perfectly demonstrated the fallacy.

 

[Keith&Co.]

....You should remove the 'ex' from your login ID....

If evolution or abiogenesis was intelligently directed I think it might be due to intelligence from the future or in a simulation. I'm not sure that is classified as being a creationist.

not even part of why i said that.

Arguing by respect for authority, though, that is.
As well as, when asked where numbers come from in an analogy, you pony up another analogy....

WHY do we care about other dimensions, though?

It makes highly unlikely things inevitable.

totally surplus to needs, then.