Also, I'm pretty sure you're wrong in calling DNA a "fluke". We don't know exactly how the first DNA or RNA came into being, but that doesn't make it a fluke.
I studied this a bit in undergrad; I thought RNA was hypothesized to be the original genetic material, and then DNA arose essentially randomly.
As Sail said, if natural selection occurred, then it wasn't really random overall.
Also, I'm pretty sure you're wrong in calling DNA a "fluke". We don't know exactly how the first DNA or RNA came into being, but that doesn't make it a fluke.
I studied this a bit in undergrad; I thought RNA was hypothesized to be the original genetic material, and then DNA arose essentially randomly.
As Sail said, if natural selection occurred, then it wasn't really random overall.
I do believe national selection to have started once the organisms where able to interact with their environment meaningfully. Random selection before hand.
As Sail said, if natural selection occurred, then it wasn't really random overall.
Yeah, I suppose that could be the case. The event still occurs randomly, though, independent of the non-randomness of the selection criteria. You could, technically, also trace the origin of the selection criteria back to random events, but that's sort of silly.
I do believe national selection to have started once the organisms where able to interact with their environment meaningfully. Random selection before hand.
A self-replicating molecule must necessarily interact with its environment in order to obtain the raw materials it needs to make a copy of itself.
As Sail said, if natural selection occurred, then it wasn't really random overall.
Yeah, I suppose that could be the case. The event still occurs randomly, though, independent of the non-randomness of the selection criteria. You could, technically, also trace the origin of the selection criteria back to random events, but that's sort of silly.
This, mostly. Natural selection makes a species more able to survive in it's environment, but look at the wide variety of species in the world. If there wasn't an element of randomness then all species would eventually converge on one perfect point, but they haven't.
that's assuming that there is a perfect point..or that perfection is a trait that natural selection would be able to select for.
And that's a completely unsupportable position. Niches are non-randomly selective, and (generally) a single organism dominates its particular niche. Other things evolve to fill different niches.
The problem with your (Jack's) position is that you say, "Wow, life is really improbable; it can't have happened by chance!" The thing is, life arising by happenstance and being selected for non-randomly is still far more likely than an invisible sky man who made everything or guided it.
You're also still a little off about natural selection. Yes, it is inherently and fundamentally random, but not as much as you might make it out to be. Natural selection is a very discrete process, one which proceeds with a large degree of predictability. We can use the principles of natural selection to make educated guesses about an organism's likelihood of survival in a given situation.
Also, natural selection != abiogenesis. Let's not get these things too confused.
If there wasn't an element of randomness then all species would eventually converge on one perfect point, but they haven't.
The primary reason they don't converge is because there are many different environments. The same species isn't going to live near volcanic vents on the bottom of the ocean that is going to live in antarctica with the penguins.
Mathematically speaking, our existence is an anomaly, an improbability.
When the options for an outcome are a sea of individually improbable outcomes, an unlikely result is only so if it was somehow desired specifically above all others. Considering the scale of the universe just as we can currently calculate it, it it not likely all that improbable at all that we exist as we do.
The same argument could be made for non-living things, distant stars, particular atoms of gold, various comets. You'll find complexity sufficient to make it in anything: life is not special or different, nor is our galaxy over others, in this regard.
...That the greatest and most complex mechanism for data retention and propagation, Deoxyribonucleic acid, was just a fluke.
The Anthropic Principle would like to have a word with you.
that's assuming that there is a perfect point..or that perfection is a trait that natural selection would be able to select for.
And that's a completely unsupportable position. Niches are non-randomly selective, and (generally) a single organism dominates its particular niche. Other things evolve to fill different niches.
The problem with your (Jack's) position is that you say, "Wow, life is really improbable; it can't have happened by chance!" The thing is, life arising by happenstance and being selected for non-randomly is still far more likely than an invisible sky man who made everything or guided it.
You're also still a little off about natural selection. Yes, it is inherently and fundamentally random, but not as much as you might make it out to be. Natural selection is a very discrete process, one which proceeds with a large degree of predictability. We can use the principles of natural selection to make educated guesses about an organism's likelihood of survival in a given situation.
Also, natural selection != abiogenesis. Let's not get these things too confused.
Certainly.
If there wasn't an element of randomness then all species would eventually converge on one perfect point, but they haven't.
The primary reason they don't converge is because there are many different environments. The same species isn't going to live near volcanic vents on the bottom of the ocean that is going to live in antarctica with the penguins.
True enough, but those two examples are on the fringes of supportable environments, and anything that evolved to survive in either environment would necessarily be too specialized to fit into a niche anywhere else.
When the options for an outcome are a sea of individually improbable outcomes, an unlikely result is only so if it was somehow desired specifically above all others. Considering the scale of the universe just as we can currently calculate it, it it not likely all that improbable at all that we exist as we do.
The same argument could be made for non-living things, distant stars, particular atoms of gold, various comets. You'll find complexity sufficient to make it inanything: life is not special or different, nor is our galaxy over others, in this regard.
Maybe so, but let's look at this in terms of programming: The programmer creates a self-sufficient program, but without small inputs every now and then, the program could go in any direction, even in ones he may not want them to.
The Anthropic Principle would like to have a word with you.
True enough, but those two examples are on the fringes of supportable environments, and anything that evolved to survive in either environment would necessarily be too specialized to fit into a niche anywhere else.
I don't see why this is a "but." You're creating a distinction without a difference. Since even a tiny, tiny edge can have a major effect on evolution when selection is allowed to act on a large population over a long time, even the slightest difference between niches is quite sufficient to differentiate discrete optimal strategies.
Mutation is random. It creates variation randomly. Natural selection then acts to preserve the variations which arise which are slightly better than others in some specific way. It is nonrandom selection of randomly-generated data. The process of evolution by natural selection is both random and not. I think this is the root of the confusion in the preceding discussion.
It sounded like what you were saying initially was just, "Science, fuck yeah!" I am totally down with spiritual peak experiences from science. I don't know why you had to get all cagey and intelligent design-ey about it.
At any point things could have turned out radically different, and I fully believe there was a guiding hand in our development
This is where the anthropic principle comes in. The fact that things are the way they are doesn't demand a designer. It only means that things are, in fact, the way they are; and if conscious creatures had never arisen to recognize that fact, they would, presumably, still be the way they then were. The only conclusion we can logically draw from the existence of humankind is that the past happened. If you want to believe in a designer, fine. We can disagree with integrity. Don't try to justify it using the ICP method, though. "Holy shit, look at all the things I don't understand! Magic!"
Mathematically speaking, our existence is an anomaly, an improbability.
As far as we can tell, the universe is some 13 billion years old, and life as we know it is some 3 billion years old. The earth is about 4.5 Billion years old. Thats a whole ton of time for something to happen. Anything that is statistically improbable with a long enough time span and a large enough set of events to happen then your chance, while each individual event has a really really small chance to happen, becomes a near certainty.
Buy enough lotto tickets you become guaranteed to win the lotto.
100 Billion Galaxies with 100 Billion stars in each galaxy and 13 billion years, with that many tickets you could win a couple billion lottos and still be at some ridiculously low odds.
I'd argue that mathematically speaking our existence is a certainty.
And this is if space is finite! The moment that you start to say space in infinite well then not only is it guaranteed that our existence is going to happen, its happened dozens of times. In fact, if there is infinite space with infinite planets then there is right now another me typing this exact post.
I hope so, because it amazes me, as I look at all the wonderful things in our universe, that this existence could be nothing more than a series of improbable chances.
It's amazing what does happen when you have so many chances for stuff to happen.
That the greatest and most complex mechanism for data retention and propagation, Deoxyribonucleic acid, was just a fluke.
If its so great why does it screw up so often?
I'm rambling now, but I get a peak experience every time I learn something new about Biology, and science in general, and I think, much like Carl Sagan, "Isn't this amazing?"
Yeah, I look at a rainbows and sunset and all I can think of is how insane it is that we're hurdling through space, that this radiation is spilling down on us, being absorbed, reflected and refracted through this thin tiny shell of an atmosphere, exciting the cells in the back of my eye and sending electrical and chemical signals into my brain which interprets it into this vision of pure beauty. All that math and those processes go through my head and I can't help but think I am special.
Not because someone designed me or everything I am seeing, but because of, not in spite of, those billions and billions of improbable events, from the moment the universe came into being to my father asking my mother out on a date after a winter race to raise money for some cause or another.
If that does not leave you in awe more than any deity, then I believe you don't have the capacity to feel it.
Comments
The problem with your (Jack's) position is that you say, "Wow, life is really improbable; it can't have happened by chance!" The thing is, life arising by happenstance and being selected for non-randomly is still far more likely than an invisible sky man who made everything or guided it.
You're also still a little off about natural selection. Yes, it is inherently and fundamentally random, but not as much as you might make it out to be. Natural selection is a very discrete process, one which proceeds with a large degree of predictability. We can use the principles of natural selection to make educated guesses about an organism's likelihood of survival in a given situation.
Also, natural selection != abiogenesis. Let's not get these things too confused.
The same argument could be made for non-living things, distant stars, particular atoms of gold, various comets. You'll find complexity sufficient to make it in anything: life is not special or different, nor is our galaxy over others, in this regard. The Anthropic Principle would like to have a word with you.
That's a philosophical argument though.
Mutation is random. It creates variation randomly. Natural selection then acts to preserve the variations which arise which are slightly better than others in some specific way. It is nonrandom selection of randomly-generated data. The process of evolution by natural selection is both random and not. I think this is the root of the confusion in the preceding discussion.
It sounded like what you were saying initially was just, "Science, fuck yeah!" I am totally down with spiritual peak experiences from science. I don't know why you had to get all cagey and intelligent design-ey about it. This is where the anthropic principle comes in. The fact that things are the way they are doesn't demand a designer. It only means that things are, in fact, the way they are; and if conscious creatures had never arisen to recognize that fact, they would, presumably, still be the way they then were. The only conclusion we can logically draw from the existence of humankind is that the past happened. If you want to believe in a designer, fine. We can disagree with integrity. Don't try to justify it using the ICP method, though. "Holy shit, look at all the things I don't understand! Magic!"
Buy enough lotto tickets you become guaranteed to win the lotto.
100 Billion Galaxies with 100 Billion stars in each galaxy and 13 billion years, with that many tickets you could win a couple billion lottos and still be at some ridiculously low odds.
I'd argue that mathematically speaking our existence is a certainty.
And this is if space is finite! The moment that you start to say space in infinite well then not only is it guaranteed that our existence is going to happen, its happened dozens of times. In fact, if there is infinite space with infinite planets then there is right now another me typing this exact post. It's amazing what does happen when you have so many chances for stuff to happen. If its so great why does it screw up so often? Yeah, I look at a rainbows and sunset and all I can think of is how insane it is that we're hurdling through space, that this radiation is spilling down on us, being absorbed, reflected and refracted through this thin tiny shell of an atmosphere, exciting the cells in the back of my eye and sending electrical and chemical signals into my brain which interprets it into this vision of pure beauty. All that math and those processes go through my head and I can't help but think I am special.
Not because someone designed me or everything I am seeing, but because of, not in spite of, those billions and billions of improbable events, from the moment the universe came into being to my father asking my mother out on a date after a winter race to raise money for some cause or another.
If that does not leave you in awe more than any deity, then I believe you don't have the capacity to feel it.