FAQ on Directed Panspermia

[pnyikos]

A. Origins of the Theory of Directed Panspermia

Below, the questions are numbered. They will be referred to in future
posts as A1, A2, etc.


1. What is directed panspermia?

It is the theory that was introduced by Nobel Laureate biochemist
Francis Crick and another distinguished biochemist, Leslie Orgel. As
they put it, it is

"the theory that organisms were deliberately
transmitted to the earth by intelligent beings
on another planet."
-- Icarus 19 (1973) 341-346
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/SCBCCP.pdf

All quotes from them below are taken from this same source. Another
website with the same article in more easily readable form [though
containing some typos] can be found here:

http://www.checktheevidence.com/Disclosure/PDF%20Documents/Directed%20Panspermia%20F.%20H.%20C.%20CRICK%20AND%20L.%20E.%20Orgel.pdf



2. How does directed panspermia relate to the "spore theory" of
Arrhenius and the "comet theory" of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe?

These theories, which predate the theory of directed panspermia, also
come under the heading of "panspermia." However, they are like
directed panspermia only insofar as they hypothesize that life as we
know it on earth began elsewhere. That is, microorganisms reached
earth from elsewhere and evolved into all other forms of earth life.
But unlike Crick and Orgel, these scientists did not assume any
intelligent agents had anything to do with the "transmission."


3. What kinds of organisms and what means of transmission did Crick
and Orgel hypothesize?

"Could life have started on Earth as a
result of infection by microorganisms
sent here deliberately by a technological
society on another planet, by means
of a special long range unmanned spaceship?"

A little later in the article, they get very specific, but only for
illustrative purposes; their general theory is as above.

"The spaceship would carry large samples
of a number of microorganisms,
each having different but simple
nutritional requirements, for example
bluegreen algae, which could grow
on CO2, and water in `sunlight.
A payload of 1000kg might be made up
of 10 samples each containing 10^16
microorganisms, or 100 samples each of
10^15 microorganisms.



4. Didn't Crick and Orgel consider the sending of organisms other
than microorganisms?

Yes, but only to comparatively nearby planetary systems. As Crick
later put it several times in _Life Itself_, "prokaryotes travel
farther". He and Orgel put it this way:

"It may be possible in the future to
send either mice or men or elaborate
instruments to the planets of other
Solar Systems (as so often described
in science fiction) but a rocket
carrying microorganisms will always
have a much greater effective range
and so be advantageous if the sole aim
is to spread life."

They go on to give several reasons immediately afterwards.



5. What kinds of "unmanned spaceships" did Crick and Orgel have in
mind?

Very slow ones, considering the vast distances between planetary
systems.

"It would not be necessary to accelerate
the spaceship to extremely high velocities,
since its time of arrival would not be important.
The radius of our galaxy is about 10^5 light years,
so we could infect most planets in the galaxy
within 10^8 yr by means of a spaceship travelling
at only onethousandths of the velocity of light.
Several thousand stars are within a hundred light
years of the Earth and could be reached within as
little as a million years by a spaceship travelling
at 60,000 mph, or within 10,000 yr if a speed
one-hundredth of that of light were possible."

Unbeknownst to Crick and Orgel, in the same year this appeared, a
think tank of the British Interplanetary Society went to work
designing a spaceship almost within reach of our technology, capable
of speeds of about one-tenth of the speed of light. More about this,
and another such project within our technological abilities right now,
will appear in a later section of this FAQ.


6. How did Crick and Orgel imagine that microorganisms could stay
alive that long?

"The question of how long microorganisms,
and in particular bacterial spores,
could survive in a spaceship
has been considered in a preliminary way
by Sneath (1962). He concludes
`that life could probably be preserved
for periods of more than a million years
if suitably protected and maintained
at temperatures close to absolute zero.'
Sagan (1960) has given a comparable estimate
of the effects of radiation damage."



7. What evidence did Crick and Orgel give for the theory of directed
panspermia?

The the scientific evidence was indirect, and admittedly weak. It took
two forms. One was the near-universality of the genetic code. [There
is one variation in ciliates and a few others in various mitochondria,
but the differences are very minor and point to a common ancestral
source.]

It is a little surprising that organisms
with somewhat different codes do not coexist.
The universality of the code follows
naturally from infective theory
of the origins of life. Life on earth
would represent a clone derived
from a single extraterrestrial organism.
Even if many codes were represented at
the primary site where life began, only a
single one might have operated in
the organisms used to infect the Earth.

Of course, they acknowledged that there were various theories for the
near-universality of the code, "but none is generally accepted to be
completely convincing." [ibid.] Here is their other piece of strictly
scientific evidence:

Molybdenum is an essential trace element
that plays an important role in many
enzymatic reactions, while chromium
and nickel are relatively unimportant
in biochemistry. The abundance of chromium,
nickel, and molybdenum on the Earth are 0.20,
3.16, and 0.02%, respectively. We cannot
conclude anything from this single example,
since molybdenum may be irreplaceable in
some essential reaction -- nitrogen fixation,
for example. However, if it could be shown
that the elements represented in terrestrial
living organisms correlate closely with those
that are abundant in some class of star ... we
might look more sympathetically at "infective”
theories.

They also had some reasoning that belongs more to the philosophy of
science than to science *per se*. They make reference to "the theorem
of detailed cosmic
reversibility" and apply it thus, near the beginning of the article:

If we are capable of infecting an
*as yet* lifeless extrasolar planet,
then, given that the time was available,
another technological society might
well have infected our planet when
it was still lifeless.

They go on later in the article to speculate on various motives the
panspermists might have had. The one that most dovetails with "the
theorem" is this:

It seems unlikely that we would deliberately
send terrestrial organisms to planets
that we believed might already be inhabited.
However, in view of the precarious situation
on Earth, we might well be tempted to infect
other planets if we became convinced that
we were alone in the galaxy (Universe).
...
The hypothetical senders on another planet
may have been able to prove that they were
likely to be alone, and to remain so, or they
may have reached this conclusion mistakenly.
In either case, if they resembled us
psychologically, their motivation for polluting
the galaxy would be strong, if they believed
that all or even the great majority of
inhabitable planets could be given life by
Directed Panspermia.

NEXT: B. Some Pointed Questions about Directed Panspermia

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
nyikos @ math.sc.edu

[pnyikos]

B. Some Pointed Questions about Directed Panspermia

B1. Doesn't directed panspermia simply "kick the can down the road"
where the origin of life is concerned?

This question is based on a misconception of what the directed
panspermia hypothesis is all about. It has nothing to say about the
ultimate origins of life in our universe; it is about the origin of
life ON EARTH.

B2. Aren't origin-of-life experiments showing that life very likely
began on earth?

The experiments have yet to produce even one nucleotide under
simulation of conditions on the early earth, after over six decades
since the original Urey-Miller experiment. In fact one website that
has been approvingly quoted by "evolutionists" in talk.origins has
gone so far to say that scientists aren't trying to produce life from
scratch in the laboratory, at all.

B3. But doesn't Ockham's Razor strongly favor life abiotically
produced on earth rather than by seeding by space aliens?

Ockham's Razor decrees only that the most parsimonious explanation be
given after ALL evidence has been scrutinized, and what little
evidence there is [see the answer to A7], is on the side of directed
panspermia.

By the way, the wording "space aliens" is a bit misleading in that it
suggests that the panspermists engaged in far-ranging space travel,
whereas they might never have even gone as far as the last large
planet in their system. The distances between stars are so great,
that all probes to other systems might have been only instrumental,
and carrying much smaller and hardier organisms than the panspermists.

B4. Why have we not found any evidence of space probes? Doesn't that
count as evidence against directed panspermia?

[The following answer is taken largely
from http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/a984ba163776071f]

This question begs the question. What artifact could possibly have
survived meteor bombardments on the moon or other body, or plate
tectonics and weathering on earth, over close to 4 billion years? What
evidence at all? The best answer takes us far away from the concept of
a probe: a biological organism, able to propagate its characteristics
indefinitely.

For instance, the panspermists might have invented the highly unusual
device called the bacterial flagellum, which is useful enough to have
a good chance of staying in existence all those billions of years
through being handed down from one generation to the next.

I once suggested that it may partly have been designed as a sort of
analogue of "Kilroy was here": intelligent beings eventually evolving
from the microscopic life the panspermists sent might look at it and
begin to suspect that their existence is due to another species having
sent life to earth, and be suitably appreciative of the gift of life
to the unknown beings that sent it.

B5. What about the astronomical expenses of a panspermia project?

The expenses would be spread out over thousands, perhaps millions of
years in the sort of project that Crick and Orgel had in mind. The
project might grow out of a long project of simply exploring the
planets of other stars with instrumental probes, and during that time
the panspermists could be expected to mine a great many asteroids or
moons of their own "solar" system, greatly expanding the resources at
their disposal.

The panspermia project can be expected to start only after hundreds of
very likely candidates for abiogenesis were found, and no life found
on any of them.

B6. What if life is very common in our galaxy? What would that do to
the hypothesis of directed panspermia?

That would entirely depend on the origins of that life. If all
technological societies preceding ours were confronted with life in
the majority of suitable planets, I doubt that there would ever have
been a directed panspermia project.

B7. Didn't Crick and Orgel later repudiate directed panspermia on
somewhat similar grounds?

One talk.origins regular has claimed this, but the claim seems to rest
on a misleading juxtaposition of references [62] (the directed
panspermia paper) and [63] in the Wikipedia entry on Francis Crick,
where it talks about directed panspermia.

[63] is a January 1993 joint paper by Crick and Orgel,

"Anticipating an RNA world. Some past
speculations on the origin of life: where are they today?". The FASEB
Journal 7 (1): 238-9. PMID 7678564

It can be read in scanned form at:

http://www.fasebj.org/content/7/1/238.long


This paper not only does not make any mention of directed panspermia,
it also makes no guesses as to the frequency or rarity of life in our
galaxy. Crick and Orgel merely acknowledge that RNA World hypothesis
had shown that an assumption they had made a number of years back was
obsolete. As the Wikipedia entry puts it:

"Crick and Orgel noted that they had been overly pessimistic about the
chances of abiogenesis on Earth when they had assumed that some kind
of self-replicating protein system was the molecular origin of life."

But they did NOT claim that this made them think abiogenesis is
commonplace in our galaxy, nor easily attained on the early earth. In
fact, in the same year that [63] was published, Orgel published
another joint article in which pessimism about RNA world was voiced:

Scientists interested in the origins of life seem to
divide neatly into two classes. The first, usually
but not always molecular biologists, believe that
RNA must have been the first replicating molecule
and that chemists are exaggerating the difficulty
of nucleotide synthesis. ... The second group
of scientists is much more pessimistic. They believe
that the de novo appearance of oligonucleotides on
the primitive earth would have been a near miracle.
(The authors subscribe to this latter view). Time
will tell which is correct.
--G. F. Joyce and Leslie E. Orgel, "Prospects
for understanding the origin of the RNA
world," in: _The RNA World_, ed. R. F.
Gesteland and J. F. Atkins, Cold Spring
Harbor Press, 1993, p. 19.

NEXT: C: Connections with abiogenesis and intelligent design

[Ray Martinez]

On Dec 6, 12:14 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>                  A. Origins of the Theory of Directed Panspermia
>
> Below, the questions are numbered.  They will be referred to in future
> posts as A1, A2, etc.
>
> 1. What is directed panspermia?
>
> It is the theory that was introduced by Nobel Laureate biochemist
> Francis Crick and another distinguished biochemist, Leslie Orgel. As
> they put it, it is
>
>   "the theory that organisms were deliberately
>    transmitted to the earth by intelligent beings
>    on another planet."

> --  Icarus 19 (1973) 341-346http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/SCBCCP.pdf

>
> All quotes from them below are taken from this same source.  Another
> website with the same article in more easily readable form [though
> containing some typos] can be found here:
>

> http://www.checktheevidence.com/Disclosure/PDF%20Documents/Directed%2...

>    might look more sympathetically at "infectiveďż˝

> University of South Carolinahttp://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
> nyikos @ math.sc.edu

General Audience:

Don't be fooled by the amoumt of text seen above: said text only
conveys the claims Directed Panspermia. If the period at the end of
this sentence were hollow the amount of evidence in existence
supporting these collective claims could fit inside with plenty of
room left over.

Ray

[pnyikos]

You might as well admit that you also think God created all earthly
animal species *de novo* and that no amount of evidence to the
contrary will ever be acknowledged by you to be evidence.

Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

So far, the evidence seems to be

1. The near invariance of the genetic code.
2. The use of molybdenum by some organisms.

Do you have anything else? Because that seems so thin that it might as
well be non-existent.

[Mitchell Coffey]

On Dec 6, 4:34 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> wrote:

The FAQ isn't complete, yet he does cite evidence. Why do you think
it's not evidence?

Mitchell Coffey

[Boikat]

Sort of like Creationism? Of course, the difference is that to some
extent panspermia (both versions) have elements of plausibility.

Boikat

[Ray Martinez]

Note the author doesn't contest my claim.

Ray

[Boikat]

And you failed to contest his reply to your comment.

Boikat

[pnyikos]

The scientific evidence. There is also philosophy-of-science
evidence, whose strength depends greatly on the question of how easy
or how hard abiogenesis is. Read A7 and B6.

> 1. The near invariance of the genetic code.
> 2. The use of molybdenum by some organisms.
>
> Do you have anything else?

See B4 for some more (also weak) evidence that has come to light since
Crick and Orgel's 1973 article. Behe has a few more in _DBB_: the
eukaryotic cilium, the protein transport mechanism, even the non-IC
example at the end of AMP synthesis.

> Because that seems so thin that it might as
> well be non-existent.

The arguments for homegrown abiogenesis are even thinner, IMHO. See
B2. Of course, there are counter-arguments, as in B3, B4 and B5. But
please read the answers so you have a better clue as to what questions
to ask after this.

Would you prefer the third alternative, the non-directed versions
mentioned in A2?

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

So does "Mother Earth did it (abiogenesis)," to a similar extent. See
B2.

And so far, through thousands of posts mentioning directed panspermia,
the playing field has remained level.

Would you like to play on it?

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

It's a matter of semantics, turkey. I'm playing ball with your
excruciatingly demanding definition of "no evidence."

Funny, Harshman also uses the same demanding definition, except that
he applies it to "God exists." And I play ball with him there, too.

Also funny: you'd much rather attack me than attack Harshman.

This is as in the political spectrum, where right and left come
together not only in constitutional democracy/republic (in the middle
of a sort of figure 8) but also in anarchy (the bottom of the figure
8) and totalitarianism (the top of the figure 8). And so, you and
Harshman may have more in common temperamentally than you and I, or I
and he.

Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

I presume you refer to the bacterial flagellum. I suppose it's evidence
if you can show that evolution can't produce that sort of thing
naturally. What evidence for that auxiliary requirement?

> Behe has a few more in _DBB_: the
> eukaryotic cilium, the protein transport mechanism, even the non-IC
> example at the end of AMP synthesis.

Those don't seem any better. I presume you believe that the evidence for
panspermia is extremely weak, and believe it for other reasons.

>> Because that seems so thin that it might as
>> well be non-existent.
>
> The arguments for homegrown abiogenesis are even thinner, IMHO. See
> B2. Of course, there are counter-arguments, as in B3, B4 and B5. But
> please read the answers so you have a better clue as to what questions
> to ask after this.
>
> Would you prefer the third alternative, the non-directed versions
> mentioned in A2?

No. I think radiation and travel time make that effectively impossible.

[John Stockwell]

Nope. Earth, or Solar system origin trumps any hypothesis that requires
that 'somehow life began somewhere else, bred up a race of intelligent
beings who 4.5 billion years ago seeded the earth with biology'.

How did the previous organisms come into existence? Abiogenesis in a
less metal (and I use that in the astronomer's sense of anything that isn't
hydrogen or helium) rich universe? Or did they, too have a previous parent race?

It is all idle speculation.

-John

[Boikat]

If it could happen somewhere else, it could have happened on Earth.

>
> And so far, through thousands of posts mentioning directed panspermia,
> the playing field has remained level.
>
> Would you like to play on it?

I do not reject the possibility of any form of panspermia, however, I
would not make it my chosen "hobbyhorse" as to the origin of life on
Earth. That being said, the *speculative nature* of panspermia can
only be held as speculative, both serious, and not so serious.

Boikat

[jonathan]

"pnyikos" <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:f10b48e0-da74-4014...@10g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...

>
> A. Origins of the Theory of Directed Panspermia
>
> Below, the questions are numbered. They will be referred to in future
> posts as A1, A2, etc.
>
>
> 1. What is directed panspermia?
>
> It is the theory that was introduced by Nobel Laureate biochemist
> Francis Crick and another distinguished biochemist, Leslie Orgel. As
> they put it, it is
>
> "the theory that organisms were deliberately
> transmitted to the earth by intelligent beings
> on another planet."
> -- Icarus 19 (1973) 341-346
> http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/SCBCCP.pdf

The notion that life must have had some mysterious help
from outside the Earth, whether some 'god' or instead
the more fashionable incarnation of 'aliens', is a result
of the lack of understanding of how Nature works.

Spontaneous cyclic order, combined with relentless
hill-climbing, is what the universe does first, best
and almost every chance it gets.

Picture a countless number of almost totally random events
interconnected across infinitely ...nested scales of space
and time. However, each event isn't totally random, but the
deck is slightly stacked in favor of order and evolution
With each event creation and evolution receives a tiny push.

On the small scale this effect is almost imperceptible
but on the system level it becomes almost unstoppable.

The vast bulk of natural systems follow power-law behavior.
Which is a form of inverse-square law just like gravity.
Where the force is strong close in, but quickly diminishes
with distance. Or...short term order, combined with long range
disorder.

From earthquakes, hurricanes, galaxies to ideas, the
system output in nature is characterized by countless
minor events combined with the rare 'big-one'.
Short term order combined with long range disorder.

Just like any fluid! Short range order, long range disorder.
Just like a sand pile, it's only a matter of time before
randomly falling sand piles up high enough for a single
grain to create an avalanche. Short range order, combined
with long range disorder.

And just as it's easy to visualize how gravity spontaneously
and relentlessly causes matter to coalesce. Power-law behavior
should make it just as easy to see how Nature spontaneously
creates cyclic order combined with relentless hill-climbing.

Creation and evolution are as inherent, pervasive
and relentless as ...gravity.

The Earth doesn't need any mysterious help from outside
to explain life on Earth.


Self-Organizing Faq
http://calresco.org/sos/sosfaq.htm

Calresco Themes (*in essay form)
http://calresco.org/themes.htm



"But nature is a stranger yet;
The ones that cite her most
Have never passed her haunted house,
Nor simplified her ghost.

To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her less
The nearer her they get.""



By E Dickinson


s

[pnyikos]

On Dec 6, 8:10 pm, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, December 6, 2012 5:19:27 PM UTC-7, pnyikos wrote:
> > On Dec 6, 5:49 pm, Boikat <boi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Dec 6, 3:34 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Dec 6, 12:14 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > A. Origins of the Theory of Directed Panspermia
>
> > > > > Below, the questions are numbered. They will be referred to in future
>
> > > > > posts as A1, A2, etc.
>
> > > > > 1. What is directed panspermia?
>
> > > > > It is the theory that was introduced by Nobel Laureate biochemist
>
> > > > > Francis Crick and another distinguished biochemist, Leslie Orgel. As
>
> > > > > they put it, it is
>
> > > > > "the theory that organisms were deliberately
>
> > > > > transmitted to the earth by intelligent beings
>
> > > > > on another planet."
>
> > > > > -- Icarus 19 (1973) 341-346http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/SCBCCP.pdf

> > > > General Audience:
>
> > > > Don't be fooled by the amoumt of text seen above: said text only
>
> > > > conveys the claims Directed Panspermia. If the period at the end of
>
> > > > this sentence were hollow the amount of evidence in existence
>
> > > > supporting these collective claims could fit inside with plenty of
>
> > > > room left over.
>
> > > Sort of like Creationism? Of course, the difference is that to some
> > > extent panspermia (both versions) have elements of plausibility.
>
> > > Boikat
>
> > So does  "Mother Earth did it (abiogenesis)," to a similar extent. See
> > B2.
>
> Nope. Earth, or Solar system origin trumps any hypothesis that requires
> that 'somehow life began somewhere else, bred up a race of intelligent
> beings who 4.5 billion years ago seeded the earth with biology'.

I note that you do not produce any evidence, but merely pose questions
that I'll be dealing with in Section C.

And it isn't just the earth, btw. I estimate about a million other
planets as well, spread out over at least a million years. Crick and
Orgel thought in those terms too.

> How did the previous organisms come into existence? Abiogenesis in a
> less metal (and I use that in the astronomer's sense of anything that isn't
> hydrogen or helium) rich universe?

I don't think the difference is crucial, when you are talking about 3
or more billion years past the birth of our universe. More about this
in Section C.

And yes, I think abiogenesis there is the way to go. No need of the
God hypothesis [although I don't completely rule it out, it isn't part
of the scientific theory of DP].

> Or did they, too  have a previous parent race?

I doubt it, since the universe is between 13 and 14 billion years old.

Peter Nyikos

[*Hemidactylus*]

>> might look more sympathetically at "infective�

Irony.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Why should he? By your estimation he could not know your personal buddy
God. Thus he is atheist and will spend eternity burning in hell with
Machiavelli, me, Ron O and O'Shea. That would suck for me and the
Florentine. I can't stand that crap in my mortal existence. il Machia
might opt for the strappado again instead. I'd rather drown in a lake of
fire.

[Ernest Major]

In message <MbCdnd1H28R...@giganews.com>, John Harshman
<jhar...@pacbell.net> writes

In the case of the biological use of molybdenum, and the non-use of
nickel and chromium, the relevant numbers are not those of the
percentages of the elements in the earth as a whole (nickel is
concentrated in the core) but in the relevant environment of
abiogenesis. What those are is not an easy question to answer but if you
take seawater as a proxy, molybdenum is present at a greater level than
nickel, and a much greater level than chromium.

>
>Do you have anything else? Because that seems so thin that it might as
>well be non-existent.
>

--
alias Ernest Major

[Mark Isaak]

On 12/6/12 12:14 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
> A. Origins of the Theory of Directed Panspermia
>
> Below, the questions are numbered. They will be referred to in future
> posts as A1, A2, etc.

That should hinder communication effectively. Few people are going to
memorize your numbering scheme.

> [...]

> 7. What evidence did Crick and Orgel give for the theory of directed
> panspermia?
>
> The the scientific evidence was indirect, and admittedly weak. It took
> two forms. One was the near-universality of the genetic code.

This does not look like evidence to me, not even weak evidence. First,
to count as evidence, it has to increase the odds of it being one way
rather than another. But even if we expect a near-universal genetic
code from directed panspermia, we also expect it from common ancestry.

Second, there is no reason to expect a common genetic code from directed
panspermia. One of the earlier points suggested that the "seeds" would
contain a variety of microorganisms suitable for different habitats. If
variety was the goal, then we might expect a variety of genetic codes to
be among the seeding population. Not finding that variety could just as
well be counted as evidence *against* directed panspermia.

(Crick and Orgel's other point about molybdenum being an essential trace
element does count as evidence, albeit extremely weak given all the
unknowns.)

> They also had some reasoning that belongs more to the philosophy of
> science than to science *per se*. They make reference to "the theorem
> of detailed cosmic
> reversibility" and apply it thus, near the beginning of the article:
>
> If we are capable of infecting an
> *as yet* lifeless extrasolar planet,
> then, given that the time was available,
> another technological society might
> well have infected our planet when
> it was still lifeless.

This is contradicted by the earlier point about cost. No generation in
history has been able to bear the cost of directed panspermia, nor have
humans ever consciously cooperated on a single project for dozens, much
less hundreds, of generations, as would be necessary for the cost to be
spread over time. The premise of Crick and Orgel's speculation above
being false, its conclusion is invalid.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most
pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems." - D. Hume

[Mark Isaak]

On 12/6/12 12:56 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
> B. Some Pointed Questions about Directed Panspermia

> [...]

> B3. But doesn't Ockham's Razor strongly favor life abiotically
> produced on earth rather than by seeding by space aliens?
>
> Ockham's Razor decrees only that the most parsimonious explanation be
> given after ALL evidence has been scrutinized, and what little
> evidence there is [see the answer to A7], is on the side of directed
> panspermia.

The evidence for directed panspermia (hereafter DirPan) is weak enough
to qualify as nonexistent. And you have not even asked what is the
evidence against DirPan.

In scenario A (standard view), you have abiogenesis by unknown means.

In scenario B (DirPan), you have abiogenesis by unknown means and
seeding by an unknown agent.

Ockham said not to multiply agents unnecessarily. Clearly, scenarios A
and B are substantively identical except that scenario B has an agent
which scenario A avoids. Ockham's razor very clearly disfavors DirPan.

> By the way, the wording "space aliens" is a bit misleading ...

This seems out of place in the FAQ, since the wording is yours.

> B4. Why have we not found any evidence of space probes? Doesn't that
> count as evidence against directed panspermia?
>
> [The following answer is taken largely
> from http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/a984ba163776071f]
>
> This question begs the question. What artifact could possibly have
> survived meteor bombardments on the moon or other body, or plate
> tectonics and weathering on earth, over close to 4 billion years? What
> evidence at all?

A probe that is still in space, in a distant orbit around the Sun. Or a
probe which left a radioactive hot spot on the Moon. And yes, not
finding such an artifact does count as weak evidence against DirPan,
albeit probably even slightly weaker than the molybdenum evidence in favor.

> For instance, the panspermists might have invented the highly unusual
> device called the bacterial flagellum, which is useful enough to have
> a good chance of staying in existence all those billions of years
> through being handed down from one generation to the next.

It does not count as evidence that you can write a science fiction story
about the event and give it a happy ending. The panspermists might have
gone out of their way not to invent the bacterial flagellum, for all we
know, thus making the flagellum a poster boy for evidence against DirPan.

[J.J. O'Shea]

On Thu, 6 Dec 2012 22:21:08 -0500, jonathan wrote
(in article <7dWdnRb1ibEF_VzN...@giganews.com>):

> The notion that life must have had some mysterious help from outside the
> Earth, whether some 'god' or instead the more fashionable incarnation of
> 'aliens', is a result of the lack of understanding of how Nature works.

And that notion is why I consider that directed panspermia and OEC are joined
at the hip, and is a key reason why I consider dear Peter to be a
creationist.

--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.

[John Harshman]

What? You consider everyone who doesn't understand how nature works to
be a creationist? Please defend this strange definition.

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 6 Dec 2012 13:59:15 -0800 (PST), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by pnyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net>:

>> General  Audience:
>>
>> Don't be fooled by the amoumt of text seen above: said text only
>> conveys the claims Directed Panspermia. If the period at the end of
>> this sentence were hollow the amount of evidence in existence
>> supporting these collective claims could fit inside with plenty of
>> room left over.

>You might as well admit that you also think God created all earthly
>animal species *de novo* and that no amount of evidence to the
>contrary will ever be acknowledged by you to be evidence.

He not only admits this, it's a cornerstone of his beliefs.
And he's said so many times in many ways.

And in this particular instance he's correct; there's as
much actual evidence in support of his beliefs as in support
of yours: Zero. This despite the two bits of putative
"evidence" cited above, which aren't evidence at all, but
speculation, and logic even the authors admit is weak.
--

Bob C.

"Evidence confirming an observation is
evidence that the observation is wrong."

- McNameless

[Robert Camp]

On Dec 6, 12:56 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>          B.  Some Pointed Questions about Directed Panspermia
>
> B1. Doesn't directed panspermia simply "kick the can down the road"
> where the origin of life is concerned?
>
> This question is based on a misconception of what the directed
> panspermia hypothesis is all about. It has nothing to say about the
> ultimate origins of life in our universe; it is about the origin of
> life ON EARTH.

Indeed it is. It's an attempt to explain the origin of life on earth -
based upon the assumption (which we can temporarily accept for the
purposes of argument) that abiogenesis could not have happened
locally.

This last bit is important, as it puts the obligations of an inference
to DP in focus. To be a reasonable, even coherent, alternative to
local abiogenesis DP must offer some elucidation of the problem it is
intended to address. It must advance concrete theory or observation
that solves the difficulties of the original assumption, e.g.,

- Evidential gaps in protein evolution argue against local
abiogenesis. This alternative theory explains *how* that evolution
occurred elsewhere, or demonstrates *how* that process was
circumvented.

DP doesn't do this. Saying, "X, Y and Z happened elsewhere" doesn't
address the assumptions which prompted the theory, and that lack
leaves it an extraneous explanation.

> B2. Aren't origin-of-life experiments showing that life very likely
> began on earth?
>
> The experiments have yet to produce even one nucleotide under
> simulation of conditions on the early earth, after over six decades
> since the original Urey-Miller experiment. In fact one website that
> has been approvingly quoted by "evolutionists" in talk.origins has
> gone so far to say that scientists aren't trying to produce life from
> scratch in the laboratory, at all.
>
> B3. But doesn't Ockham's Razor strongly favor life abiotically
> produced on earth rather than by seeding by space aliens?
>
> Ockham's Razor decrees only that the most parsimonious explanation be
> given after ALL evidence has been scrutinized, and what little
> evidence there is [see the answer to A7], is on the side of directed
> panspermia.

None of that is correct. The Razor is just a guide, it's not
determinative. The point of the Razor isn't to wait for all, or even
ALL, available evidence, it's to encourage a preference for simpler
explanations until a more complex explanation is warranted, i.e., when
that complexity better explains the data (for real values of
"explain").

The last comment above makes reference to "evidence" which amounts to
little more than incredulity, fuzzy speculation, and gap arguments. A
parsimonious approach considers the nature and history of scientific
investigation, the broad sweep of which militates against
unnecessarily positing assumptions like "aliens did it."

None of this means DP is impossible or even uninteresting. it just
means there's no reason to prefer it as an explanation for the origins
of life on earth.

RLC

[Ray Martinez]

So Peter has obtained a convert, also known as a lackey. Your mind is
so open to any and all Atheist garbage you've failed to notice that
your brain has fallen out of your head.

I've asked Peter where he obtained the idea that space aliens are
responsible for biological First Cause, he never replied. Was it from
George Lucas, Gene Roddenbury, L. Ron Hubbard, H.G. Wells, or some
other person?

Do let us know.

Ray

[pnyikos]

On Dec 6, 10:21 pm, "jonathan" <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> "pnyikos" <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message

>
> news:f10b48e0-da74-4014...@10g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...

> >                 A. Origins of the Theory of Directed Panspermia
>
> > Below, the questions are numbered.  They will be referred to in future
> > posts as A1, A2, etc.
>
> > 1. What is directed panspermia?
>
> > It is the theory that was introduced by Nobel Laureate biochemist
> > Francis Crick and another distinguished biochemist, Leslie Orgel. As
> > they put it, it is
>
> >  "the theory that organisms were deliberately
> >   transmitted to the earth by intelligent beings
> >   on another planet."
> > --  Icarus 19 (1973) 341-346
> >http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/SCBCCP.pdf
>
> The notion that life must have had some mysterious help
> from outside the Earth,

Enough already with these uses of "must have". Directed panspermia is
a theory, and a hypothesis, with no imperatives about it. Crick and
Orgel refused to take a stand on how likely or unlikely the hypothesis
is, and I haven't taken a firm stand either.

I believe the odds favor directed panspermia vs earthly abiogenesis as
the explanation for how life began. I even tend to believe the odds to
be somewhere between 3:1 and 30:1, leaving undirected panspermia (A2)
out of the picture.

But even that range depends upon a host of opinions about other
probabilities. More about this in Section C, which I hope to post
before I go on my long holiday break. [My family takes a much bigger
priority then.] I also hope to post Section D on Delivery Systems
before Christmas also.

> whether some 'god' or instead
> the more fashionable incarnation of 'aliens', is a result
> of the lack of understanding of how Nature works.

We all share that, in spades. See B2 thru B7. More to come in
Section C.

> Spontaneous cyclic order, combined with relentless
> hill-climbing, is what the universe does first, best
> and almost every chance it gets.

And part of that relentless hill-climbing is the evolution of a
technologically able species such as ourselves. Do you think the next
million years will just be a continuation of the 40 years' "loss of
nerve" since the last moon landing?

> Picture a countless number of almost totally random events
> interconnected across infinitely ...nested scales of space
> and time. However, each event isn't totally random, but the
> deck is slightly stacked in favor of order and evolution
> With each event creation and evolution receives a tiny push.

Yup.

> On the small scale this effect is almost imperceptible
> but on the system level it becomes almost unstoppable.

We have seen it in what has happened since the first prokaryotes.
It's what came before then that we are greatly in the dark about. See
the joint statement by Joyce and Orgel in B7. We have come only a
tiny bit further in the intervening two decades.

[prose poem snipped]

> The Earth doesn't need any mysterious help from outside
> to explain life on Earth.

I never said anything about "need". It's a question of what is more
likely, that's all.

> Self-Organizing Faq
http://calresco.org/sos/sosfaq.htm

Generalities like the ones in that Faq amount to little more than
another prose poem.

> Calresco Themes (*in essay form)
http://calresco.org/themes.htm

Oh, wow, "meta-philosophical"! as though "philosophical" were not
expansive enough.

>       "But nature is a stranger yet;
>         The ones that cite her most
>       Have never passed her haunted house,
>         Nor simplified her ghost.
>
>       To pity those that know her not
>         Is helped by the regret
>       That those who know her, know her less
>         The nearer her they get.""
>
> By E Dickinson

That poem beats the "meta-philosophy" hands down, IMHO.

Peter Nyikos

[Burkhard]

Not as far as I can see. Mitchell's point is not that the evidence is
strong, let lone convincing.
It is still evidence though - well, some of it is.

also known as a lackey. Your mind is
> so open to any and all Atheist garbage you've failed to notice that
> your brain has fallen out of your head.
>
> I've asked Peter where he obtained the idea that space aliens are
> responsible for biological First Cause, he never replied.

I think he did, as did others. They all pointed out to you that you
misunderstand what "First cause" means, and that
his argument has absolutely nothing to do with it.

[pnyikos]

On Dec 6, 11:46 pm, *Hemidactylus* <ecpho...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/06/2012 06:36 PM, Ray Martinez wrote:

> > On Dec 6, 1:59 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >> On Dec 6, 4:34 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >>> On Dec 6, 12:14 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >>>> A. Origins of the Theory of Directed Panspermia

> >>> Don't be fooled by the amoumt of text seen above: said text only
> >>> conveys the claims Directed Panspermia. If the period at the end of
> >>> this sentence were hollow the amount of evidence in existence
> >>> supporting these collective claims could fit inside with plenty of
> >>> room left over.
>
> >>> Ray
>
> >> You might as well admit that you also think God created all earthly
> >> animal species *de novo* and that no amount of evidence to the
> >> contrary will ever be acknowledged by you to be evidence.
>
> >> Peter Nyikos
>
> > Note the author doesn't contest my claim.
>
> Why should he? By your estimation he could not know your personal buddy
> God. Thus he is atheist

Nope, an agnostic, who has more respect than about 99% of the
population for Voltaire's prayer, "Oh God, if there is a God, save my
soul, if I have a soul."

> and will spend eternity burning in hell with
> Machiavelli, me, Ron O and O'Shea.

Burn? Not if the hereafter is anything like C. S. Lewis's picture in
_The Great Divorce_.

Believers the world over pay lip service to the claim, "If you go to
hell, it is because you have chosen it." C. S. Lewis actually took
the claim seriously.

By the way, there are at least three talk.origins Village Elders who
frown on anyone but a Village Elder of talk.origins (or those a
Village Elder has taken under his wing) gratuitously mentioning
someone not involved in the thread where the mentioning was done.

Since you are a t.o. Village Elder yourself, you have nothing to worry
about.

> That would suck for me and the
> Florentine.

And for me. Not because of you, nor the Florentine, of course. He
has much bigger fry than any of us to worry about.

> I can't stand that crap in my mortal existence.

You don't care who is in the right, you just want it ended, don't
you?

Could you explain just why?

> il Machia
> might opt for the strappado again instead. I'd rather drown in a lake of
> fire.

If C. S. Lewis hit upon the truth, you'll have an infinite amount of
space to move away from anyone you think you don't like.

All in a fire-less hell, unless you want to conjure some fire up
yourself.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 7, 2:41 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
> On 12/6/12 12:14 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
>
>
> >                   A. Origins of the Theory of Directed Panspermia
>
> > Below, the questions are numbered.  They will be referred to in future
> > posts as A1, A2, etc.
>
> That should hinder communication effectively.  Few people are going to
> memorize your numbering scheme.

Google is your friend, and the friend of anyone who doesn't want to
memorize it.

However, since we are now in the second page of the thread as it
appears in the standard view of the old Google Groups, I am starting
to quote from these instead of just giving numbers below.

> > [...]
> > 7. What evidence did Crick and Orgel give for the theory of directed
> > panspermia?
>
> > The the scientific evidence was indirect, and admittedly weak. It took
> > two forms.  One was the near-universality of the genetic code.
>
> This does not look like evidence to me, not even weak evidence.  First,
> to count as evidence, it has to increase the odds of it being one way
> rather than another.  But even if we expect a near-universal genetic
> code from directed panspermia, we also expect it from common ancestry.

Why? A genetic code is a relative late-comer, and the general idea is
that even when it was in place, it coded for far fewer amino acids (as
few as 4) to begin with. What's to keep one new amino acid being
associated independently with a variety of amino acids?

> Second, there is no reason to expect a common genetic code from directed
> panspermia.

There is every reason to expect only small variations, if the
microorganisms used for seeding were as sophisticated as our
prokaryotes. Changes in the genetic code are extremely hazardous by
that stage. Do I need to explain why?

>One of the earlier points suggested that the "seeds" would
> contain a variety of microorganisms suitable for different habitats.  If
> variety was the goal, then we might expect a variety of genetic codes to
> be among the seeding population.

First you speak of very, very useful variety, then you speak of what
is essentially variety for the sake of variety.

Don't you think it just a wee bit strange that Crick and Orgel
disagreed with you?

{Excerpt from the answer to A7:]

The universality of the code follows
naturally from infective theory
of the origins of life. Life on earth
would represent a clone derived
from a single extraterrestrial organism.
Even if many codes were represented at
the primary site where life began, only a
single one might have operated in
the organisms used to infect the Earth.

http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/SCBCCP.pdf

What are YOUR biochemical credentials?

> Not finding that variety could just as
> well be counted as evidence *against* directed panspermia.

You persist in your category confusion.

> (Crick and Orgel's other point about molybdenum being an essential trace
> element does count as evidence, albeit extremely weak given all the
> unknowns.)
>
> > They also had some reasoning that belongs more to the philosophy of
> > science than to science *per se*. They make reference to "the theorem
> > of detailed cosmic
> > reversibility" and apply it thus, near the beginning of the article:
>
> >   If we are capable of infecting an
> >   *as yet* lifeless extrasolar planet,
> >   then, given that the time was available,
> >   another technological society might
> >   well have infected our planet when
> >   it was still lifeless.
>
> This is contradicted by the earlier point about cost.

The *relevant* point came later, in B5:

B5. What about the astronomical expenses of a panspermia project?

The expenses would be spread out over thousands, perhaps millions of
years in the sort of project that Crick and Orgel had in mind. The
project might grow out of a long project of simply exploring the
planets of other stars with instrumental probes, and during that time
the panspermists could be expected to mine a great many asteroids or
moons of their own "solar" system, greatly expanding the resources at
their disposal.

The panspermia project can be expected to start only after hundreds of
very likely candidates for abiogenesis were found, and no life found
on any of them.
============ end of answer to B5.

> No generation in
> history has been able to bear the cost of directed panspermia,

On the contrary, the Apollo program was only a few times less costly
on a yearly basis than a directed panspermia program would be, and was
dwarfed by our military spending.

Do you envision the future of the human race to be always living under
the shadow of massive war? I don't, and I certainly think that a race
that felt it was alone in the known universe would sober up about
that, as Porky suggests in that famous Pogo comic strip.

> nor have
> humans ever consciously cooperated on a single project for dozens, much
> less hundreds, of generations, as would be necessary for the cost to be
> spread over time.   The premise of Crick and Orgel's speculation above
> being false, its conclusion is invalid.

Getting to be quite a pessimist in your autumn years, aren't you?

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 7, 3:16 pm, Robert Camp <robertlc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 6, 12:56 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >          B.  Some Pointed Questions about Directed Panspermia
>
> > B1. Doesn't directed panspermia simply "kick the can down the road"
> > where the origin of life is concerned?
>
> > This question is based on a misconception of what the directed
> > panspermia hypothesis is all about. It has nothing to say about the
> > ultimate origins of life in our universe; it is about the origin of
> > life ON EARTH.
>
> Indeed it is. It's an attempt to explain the origin of life on earth -
> based upon the assumption (which we can temporarily accept for the
> purposes of argument) that abiogenesis could not have happened
> locally.

False. See my reply to Jonathan for details.

> This last bit is important,

It is "garbage in," and so I've deleted the subsequent "garbage out."

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 7, 5:08 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I've asked Peter where he obtained the idea that space aliens are
> responsible for biological First Cause, he never replied.

I believe I did tell you that I think abiogensis on a planet where the
"space aliens" evolved naturally, was the Biological First Cause.

[Thanks for using that "space aliens" term, yet again; someone whose
*first* name begins with M thought it was my own invention.]

> Was it from
> George Lucas, Gene Roddenbury, L. Ron Hubbard, H.G. Wells, or some
> other person?

From innumerable origin-of-life articles and book chapters, lots of
which mentioned the Urey-Miller experiment.

I just think the odds [see my reply to Jonathan] favor it happening on
another planet, and some of the distant results transporting other
distant results here.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

This may have to be my last post till Monday, since I don't plan to
break my custom of almost never posting to Usenet on weekends. It's
close to dinner time and we have plans for this evening.

On Dec 7, 3:38 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
> On 12/6/12 12:56 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
>
>
> >           B.  Some Pointed Questions about Directed Panspermia
> > [...]
> > B3. But doesn't Ockham's Razor strongly favor life abiotically
> > produced on earth rather than by seeding by space aliens?
>
> > Ockham's Razor decrees only that the most parsimonious explanation be
> > given after ALL evidence has been scrutinized, and what little
> > evidence there is [see the answer to A7], is on the side of directed
> > panspermia.
>
> The evidence for directed panspermia (hereafter DirPan) is weak enough
> to qualify as nonexistent.  And you have not even asked what is the
> evidence against DirPan.

I figure people like you will give your two cents' worth about that,
without me asking.

> In scenario A (standard view), you have abiogenesis by unknown means.
>
> In scenario B (DirPan), you have abiogenesis by unknown means and
> seeding by an unknown agent.
>
> Ockham said not to multiply agents unnecessarily.  Clearly, scenarios A
> and B are substantively identical except that scenario B has an agent
> which scenario A avoids.

False. Scenario B has an agent which renders thousands of scenario A
"agents" unnecessary.

A = Abiogenesis, on a planet where there is life now.

> > By the way, the wording "space aliens" is a bit misleading ...
>
> This seems out of place in the FAQ, since the wording is yours.

Baloney. The term's been used numerous times by my critics here in
t.o. Ray Martinez used it shortly after you did, having used it many
times before.

At some point I may stretch the "F" in "FAQ" but this is NOT one of
the places where I am stretching it.

> > B4. Why have we not found any evidence of space probes?  Doesn't that
> > count as evidence against directed panspermia?
>
> > [The following answer is taken largely

> > fromhttp://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/a984ba163776071f]

>
> > This question begs the question. What artifact could possibly have
> > survived meteor bombardments on the moon or other body, or plate
> > tectonics and weathering on earth, over close to 4 billion years? What
> > evidence at all?
>
> A probe that is still in space, in a distant orbit around the Sun.

The very person who last essentially asked B4 also made a huge deal
about planetary orbits being "chaotic" [in a very precise technical
sense] and how *he* thought a space probe could be expected to miss
its target planet after a mere few thousand years en route from
launch.

And now you think a tiny probe, VASTLY more vulnerable to
gravitational perturbations than a planet, can be expected not to be
kicked out of the solar system, or crash into a sizable meteoroid (or
something bigger) after nearly 4 BILLION years???

Check out the Wikipedia entry on Chiron for a real-life case of
something that may soon be kicked out of our solar system.

I should qualify what I said just now: being in a Trojan position wrt
earth and its moon, or Jupiter and the sun, might stabilize the orbit
even over 4 bilion years' time, but it would also greatly increase the
collisions with debris naturally attracted to such places.

> Or a
> probe which left a radioactive hot spot on the Moon.

Still hot after nearly 4 billion years? How big do you think the
probe would be, the size of Ceres?

> And yes, not
> finding such an artifact does count as weak evidence against DirPan,
> albeit probably even slightly weaker than the molybdenum evidence in favor.

Read what I wrote just now, and see if you can still justify that
"slightly." I don't think you can.

>
> > For instance, the panspermists might have invented the highly unusual
> > device called the bacterial flagellum, which is useful enough to have
> > a good chance of staying in existence all those billions of years
> > through being handed down from one generation to the next.
>
> It does not count as evidence that you can write a science fiction story
> about the event and give it a happy ending.  The panspermists might have
> gone out of their way not to invent the bacterial flagellum, for all we
> know, thus making the flagellum a poster boy for evidence against DirPan.

OK, now I know you are posting with tongue in cheek.

Oh, wait... you are Mark Isaak, so all bets are off.

Peter Nyikos

[Mitchell Coffey]

Wow. I'm not even close to agreeing with Peter.

I asked a simple question. Evidently you are unable to defend your claim
about Peter's evidence.

Mitchell Coffey

[Ray Martinez]

On Dec 6, 4:29 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

[snip Peter's DP nonsense....]

>
> > > > General Audience:
>
> > > > Don't be fooled by the amoumt of text seen above: said text only
> > > > conveys the claims Directed Panspermia. If the period at the end of
> > > > this sentence were hollow the amount of evidence in existence
> > > > supporting these collective claims could fit inside with plenty of
> > > > room left over.
>
> > > > Ray
>
> > > You might as well admit that you also think God created all earthly
> > > animal species *de novo* and that no amount of evidence to the
> > > contrary will ever be acknowledged by you to be evidence.
>
> > > Peter Nyikos
>
> > Note the author doesn't contest my claim.
>
> It's a matter of semantics, turkey.  I'm playing ball with your
> excruciatingly demanding definition of "no evidence."
>
> Funny, Harshman also uses the same demanding definition, except that
> he applies it to "God exists."   And I play ball with him there, too.
>
> Also funny: you'd much rather attack me than attack Harshman.

We attack each other regularly (whether you notice or not).

>
> This is as in the political spectrum, where right and left come
> together not only in constitutional democracy/republic (in the middle
> of a sort of figure 8) but also in anarchy (the bottom of the figure
> 8) and totalitarianism (the top of the figure 8).  And so, you and
> Harshman may have more in common temperamentally than you and I, or I
> and he.
>
> Peter Nyikos

What does John Harshman have to do with the fact that you have ZERO
evidence supporting space aliens responsible for biological First
Cause?

Again, I offer the degree of evasion seen as supporting my observation
that your claims have no evidence in support, but insult
intelligence.

Peter: Where did you obtain the idea that space aliens seeded life on
Earth? George Lucas, Gene Roddenbury, L. Ron Hubbard, H.G. Wells? Why
should anyone take you seriously? I suspect your only refuge is
credentials.

General Audience:

Peter Nyikos is a credentialed Evolutionist with a wide range of real
knowledge. And let us remember that so called Christian Evolutionists
accept God as responsible for biological First Cause and initiating
the selection process. Yet Peter rejects in favor of space aliens who
exist on some unidentified planet. And he rejects all UFO phenomena
(unlike myself). Acceptance of science fiction concepts as responsible
for biological First Cause, and rejection of God to have accomplished
the same, equates to a violent ultra-irrational Atheism (one that even
surpasses Richard Dawkins).

Ray (Protestant Evangelical, Paleyan IDist)

[Don Cates]

Concerning Peter's (actually Crick and Orgel) evidence, I recall someone
addressed the Mo/Cr/Ni "problem". Availability is probably more
important than abundance.
Abundance on Earth:
Mo - 0.02%
Cr - 0.2%
Ni - 3.06%
Availability in seawater (3.5% salinity)
Mo - 0.01 ppm
Cr - 0.0002 ppm
Ni - 0.006 ppm

It may well be considered evidence worth zero.

--
--
Don Cates ("he's a cunning rascal" PN)

[Paul J Gans]

pnyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

[snip]

>The very person who last essentially asked B4 also made a huge deal
>about planetary orbits being "chaotic" [in a very precise technical
>sense] and how *he* thought a space probe could be expected to miss
>its target planet after a mere few thousand years en route from
>launch.

[snip]

As the person referred to above, I must object. The background
includes your claim that the panspermists scouted out likely
solar systems using ships that might take tens of thousands
of years to complete their voyage.

That would then be followed by seed ships taking about as long
to reach the designated systems.

Now I'm glad to see that we finally agree that n-body orbits
about a central mass with n > 1 are chaotic. Just how long
the period of stability might last depends on the initial
conditions of all the major (and minor) objects orbit the
system.

Early in the solar system's history the orbits were quite
chaotic. That much is KNOWN. Thus the time of observation
for the seeder's ships must have been after this period.

The solar system seems to have calmed down after that.

This involves the problem that the seeders had to identify
our solar system as a plausible seeding candidate even
earlier without knowing the stability of the system at all.

That was the reason why I raised chaos as a problem. I
had hoped for a reasoned answer from you, but I never got
one.

My next step, never taken due to lack of response, was
that we know that the earth formed about 4.5 billion years
ago. There seems already to have been life on earth about
3.5 billion years ago. Some sources claim that photosynthesis
already existed by then. Thus the seeding window less than
1 billion years. In fact it was much shorter since the
early crust was in "turmoil" due to impact heating, heat
stemming from the core, and outgassing.

So it seems that the seeders got lucky and reached the
earth during the very short window of opportunity of
much less than 1 billion years.

There are many other objections as well, but absent any
meaningful discussion of what is a chemical and physical
problem, there's no point in bringing them up.

--
--- Paul J. Gans

[jillery]

At least some of the FAQ's facts are either obsolete or were never
correct in the first place. For example:

<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7244/abs/nature08013.html>

<http://molbio.mgh.harvard.edu/szostakweb/publications/Szostak_pdfs/Powner_et_al_2010_JACS.pdf>

describe processes to synthesize ribonucleotides in prebiotically
plausible conditions.

Here is a link to a page from Jack Szostak's website, which lists
many other articles about abiotic chemistry:

<http://molbio.mgh.harvard.edu/szostakweb/publications.html>

I appreciate your effort to keep DP discussions honest.

[*Hemidactylus*]

One of those names listed was a bit gratuitous dontcha think? Still you
suffer from genetic fallacy if you point to the sources of Peter's
inspiration to mock him.

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/b8ddd1fed8aed382?dmode=source

[quote]That's for my original hypothesis, which had to do with Xordax.
Lately I've thought of another, very different hypothesis with RNA-based
life whose main form of reproduction is conjugation in tandem
with budding. For this other planet, I prefer a different name
than Xordax, which has come to be associated with the modification
of life with essentially the same genetic code as ours.

My stopgap name for the planet of this RNA hypothesis is "Throom",
inspired by a planet in the science fiction novel
_I Claim These Stars_ called "Thrym".

[Or was it _We Claim These Stars_? or something else?
I last saw that novel in 1962,
when it was published in a paperback, back-to-back with a
science fiction novel by Asimov which may have been the first
in the _Foundation_ trilogy. Besides Thrymans, it had two
memorable human characters named Valti and Chantavar, as well
as the human hero who IIRC was presented in the first person.]

Anyway, the Thrymans were
ammonia-based creatures able to link up their brains and use
the full computing power of the aggregate to come up with solutions
to problems. I do not include the detail about "ammonia-based"
in my RNA-based hypothesis; I'm undecided between water and ammonia
there. The link-up of brains is also an optional feature, but
as long as I hypothesize elaborate forms of conjugation I
might as well hypothesize it too.[/quote]

And besides Peter's pet hypothesis is about as awe inspiring as Asimov's
psychohistory. Sounds awesome on paper til it meets the real world. Hari
Seldon was, as I hate to point out, a fictional character in a
book...like that fact ever took the solar wind from anyone's sails.

[Ernest Major]

In message <k9u9co$p12$1...@canopus.cc.umanitoba.ca>, Don Cates
<caHOR...@mts.net> writes

That was me.

> Availability is probably more important than abundance.
>Abundance on Earth:
>Mo - 0.02%
>Cr - 0.2%
>Ni - 3.06%
>Availability in seawater (3.5% salinity)
>Mo - 0.01 ppm
>Cr - 0.0002 ppm
>Ni - 0.006 ppm
>
>It may well be considered evidence worth zero.
>

Wikipedia says that molybdenum is more soluble in an oxidising
environment than in a reducing or neutral environment. So while current
sea-water is a better proxy than the bulk composition of the earth it's
not ideal. (My guess is that nickel and chromium would also display
reduced solubility, so the relative abundances will change less than the
absolute abundances.)

Other issues are

* whether there is a mechanism by which a planet with molybdenum
concentrations significantly enriched, relative to nickel and chromium,
can be achieved. I am skeptical, but even if there is, it's adding
another layer of improbability to the panspermia hypothesis.
* whether the use of molybenum is a primitive trait - if it's a derived
trait one can't simultaneously use its use to argue for panspermia and
claim to accept common descent.
* contrary to the argument nickel is used biologically. (Whether
Chromium is is unclear.) But whether this is a refutation depends on
whether the particular panspermia hypothesis adopted includes common
descent, and if so whether the use of nickel is a primitive trait.

The near-universiality of the genetic code struck me as not being
evidence in favour of panspermia, but Peter has actually subsequently
given a weak justification for this. (The counterargument is that
coalescence due to selective advantage or contingent extinction of
clades is to be expected.)
--
alias Ernest Major

[Paul J Gans]

Not at all. It is quite important.

[Mitchell Coffey]

> --- Paul J. Gans

There are parts of the planet where molybdenum has been naturally concentrated to far more than 0.02% of the surrounding crust. After all, huge amounts of it is mined, its most abundant use being as an important and common alloying metal, expensive, but not rare.

Whatever the relative availability of molybdenum compared to nickel and chromium, there would still have been appreciable molybdenum in the environment. Isn't the real issue whether there is a biochemical or, possibly to coin a word, protobiochemical reason why molybdenum would or wouldn't have been preferred over the other metals for - here's another - protoenzymatic purposes in whatever environment obtained at the time of the putative abiogenic event or later?

Mitchell Coffey

[Mitchell Coffey]

On Thursday, December 6, 2012 7:19:27 PM UTC-5, pnyikos wrote:
> On Dec 6, 5:49�pm, Boikat <boi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> > Sort of like Creationism? �Of course, the difference is that to some
> > extent panspermia (both versions) have elements of plausibility.
>
> > Boikat
>
> So does "Mother Earth did it (abiogenesis)," to a similar extent. See
> B2.

Oh, common, "Mother Earth did it" is not a similar event, it is only true as a metaphor; "God did it" and "Space aliens" did it are intended literately. You're not showing yourself as serious making claims like this.

> And so far, through thousands of posts mentioning directed panspermia,
> the playing field has remained level.
>
> Would you like to play on it?
>
> Peter Nyikos

I understand you think the playing field has remained level. It's hard to claim that even Crick and Orgel would agree with you on that, as substantial scientific work has overcome certain of their concerns. Science isn't about making everyone with outlying theories agree with the consensus. Again, you're not being serious.

Mitchell Coffey

[Mark Isaak]

On 12/7/12 3:49 PM, pnyikos wrote:
> On Dec 7, 3:38 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
>> On 12/6/12 12:56 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>>
>>> B. Some Pointed Questions about Directed Panspermia
>>> [...]
>>> B3. But doesn't Ockham's Razor strongly favor life abiotically
>>> produced on earth rather than by seeding by space aliens?
>>
>>> Ockham's Razor decrees only that the most parsimonious explanation be
>>> given after ALL evidence has been scrutinized, and what little
>>> evidence there is [see the answer to A7], is on the side of directed
>>> panspermia.
>>
>> The evidence for directed panspermia (hereafter DirPan) is weak enough
>> to qualify as nonexistent. And you have not even asked what is the
>> evidence against DirPan.
>
> I figure people like you will give your two cents' worth about that,
> without me asking.

Bad approach. Once you have a hypothesis, your first and most important
job is to try your damnedest to sink it yourself, at least if you want
the hypothesis to be taken as plausible and not as speculative fiction.
Doing so will make others take you more seriously; it may be
educational; and it is always good exercise.

The fact that you avoid looking for holes in DirPan tells me that it is
more a beloved pet of yours that a proposal for people to seriously
think about.

>> In scenario A (standard view), you have abiogenesis by unknown means.
>>
>> In scenario B (DirPan), you have abiogenesis by unknown means and
>> seeding by an unknown agent.
>>
>> Ockham said not to multiply agents unnecessarily. Clearly, scenarios A
>> and B are substantively identical except that scenario B has an agent
>> which scenario A avoids.
>
> False. Scenario B has an agent which renders thousands of scenario A
> "agents" unnecessary.

No, it doesn't. Scenario B has local abiogenesis (scenario A) as a subset.

>>> B4. Why have we not found any evidence of space probes? Doesn't that
>>> count as evidence against directed panspermia?
>>
>>> [The following answer is taken largely
>>> fromhttp://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/a984ba163776071f]
>>
>>> This question begs the question. What artifact could possibly have
>>> survived meteor bombardments on the moon or other body, or plate
>>> tectonics and weathering on earth, over close to 4 billion years? What
>>> evidence at all?
>>
>> A probe that is still in space, in a distant orbit around the Sun.
>
> The very person who last essentially asked B4 also made a huge deal
> about planetary orbits being "chaotic" [in a very precise technical
> sense] and how *he* thought a space probe could be expected to miss
> its target planet after a mere few thousand years en route from
> launch.
>
> And now you think a tiny probe, VASTLY more vulnerable to
> gravitational perturbations than a planet, can be expected not to be
> kicked out of the solar system, or crash into a sizable meteoroid (or
> something bigger) after nearly 4 BILLION years???

Yes. The asteroids appear to be original equipment of the Solar System,
and there are still plenty of them around. At least one which has been
viewed closely by space probe shows no evidence of collision since the
planet-forming era. The probe would likely want to settle into orbit to
scout the system (it would need to decelerate anyway), and it could
easily do so in an uncrowded orbit, such as perpendicular to the plane
of the system.

>> Or a
>> probe which left a radioactive hot spot on the Moon.
>
> Still hot after nearly 4 billion years? How big do you think the
> probe would be, the size of Ceres?

Still radioactive after 4 billion years, yes. U-238 has a half-life of
about 4.5 billion years. A nuclear power source which included it would
easily be spotted on the Moon and could easily be spotted in many other
locales.

>> And yes, not
>> finding such an artifact does count as weak evidence against DirPan,
>> albeit probably even slightly weaker than the molybdenum evidence in favor.
>
> Read what I wrote just now, and see if you can still justify that
> "slightly." I don't think you can.

And I forgot an even stronger bit of evidence against (which Gans has
already mentioned): the timing. Life has been on earth for about as
long as life could possibly exist on earth. If the seeders were sending
out probes on their schedule, the seeds could have arrived anytime in
the last 4.5 billion years. It's an awful big coincidence that they
arrived at the very start of the timeline. I'm suspicious of coincidences.

>>> For instance, the panspermists might have invented the highly unusual
>>> device called the bacterial flagellum, which is useful enough to have
>>> a good chance of staying in existence all those billions of years
>>> through being handed down from one generation to the next.
>>
>> It does not count as evidence that you can write a science fiction story
>> about the event and give it a happy ending. The panspermists might have
>> gone out of their way not to invent the bacterial flagellum, for all we
>> know, thus making the flagellum a poster boy for evidence against DirPan.
>
> OK, now I know you are posting with tongue in cheek.

You still don't see your problem? Your panspermists are created in your
image. All of your hypotheses are premised on your panspermists acting
just like *you* want them to act. But there is no reason whatsoever to
expect panspermists anything like you suggest. Every time you include
"the panspermists might ..." in a sentence, you must also add another
sentence with "the panspermists might not", because both cases are
equally justified.

[Mark Isaak]

On 12/7/12 2:34 PM, pnyikos wrote:
> On Dec 6, 10:21 pm, "jonathan" <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:

> [much snipped]

>> Spontaneous cyclic order, combined with relentless
>> hill-climbing, is what the universe does first, best
>> and almost every chance it gets.
>
> And part of that relentless hill-climbing is the evolution of a
> technologically able species such as ourselves.

"Technologically able species" constitute, at a generous estimate, about
0.0000001% of species and about 0.0001% of earth's history. It's hard
for me to take those numbers as indicative.

> Do you think the next
> million years will just be a continuation of the 40 years' "loss of
> nerve" since the last moon landing?

In the next million years, there will be at least one dark age far worse
than the one that now gets capitalized. I would hypothesize more such
dark ages, except there is a decent chance humans would never get out of
the first one.

[Mark Isaak]

On 12/7/12 3:10 PM, pnyikos wrote:
> On Dec 7, 2:41 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
>> On 12/6/12 12:14 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>>
>>> A. Origins of the Theory of Directed Panspermia
>>

>>> [...]
>>> 7. What evidence did Crick and Orgel give for the theory of directed
>>> panspermia?
>>
>>> The the scientific evidence was indirect, and admittedly weak. It took
>>> two forms. One was the near-universality of the genetic code.
>>
>> This does not look like evidence to me, not even weak evidence. First,
>> to count as evidence, it has to increase the odds of it being one way
>> rather than another. But even if we expect a near-universal genetic
>> code from directed panspermia, we also expect it from common ancestry.
>
> Why? A genetic code is a relative late-comer,

Relative to what? If there was a genetic code -- or several -- in place
at the time of the eubacteria-archaea split, I expect the code in that
common ancestor would come to be universal (barring minor changes later
in history, as you have noted elsewhere).

> and the general idea is
> that even when it was in place, it coded for far fewer amino acids (as
> few as 4) to begin with. What's to keep one new amino acid being
> associated independently with a variety of amino acids?
>
>> Second, there is no reason to expect a common genetic code from directed
>> panspermia.
>
> There is every reason to expect only small variations, if the
> microorganisms used for seeding were as sophisticated as our
> prokaryotes. Changes in the genetic code are extremely hazardous by
> that stage.

Not if they are intelligently engineered.

>> One of the earlier points suggested that the "seeds" would
>> contain a variety of microorganisms suitable for different habitats. If
>> variety was the goal, then we might expect a variety of genetic codes to
>> be among the seeding population.
>
> First you speak of very, very useful variety, then you speak of what
> is essentially variety for the sake of variety.

Do you thing vastly different genetic codes would *not* have different
advantages in different settings? How many vastly different genetic
codes have you researched?

> Don't you think it just a wee bit strange that Crick and Orgel
> disagreed with you?
>
> {Excerpt from the answer to A7:]
> The universality of the code follows
> naturally from infective theory
> of the origins of life. Life on earth
> would represent a clone derived
> from a single extraterrestrial organism.
> Even if many codes were represented at
> the primary site where life began, only a
> single one might have operated in
> the organisms used to infect the Earth.
>
> http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/SCBCCP.pdf
>
> What are YOUR biochemical credentials?

Read again what they wrote. They are assuming descent from a single ET
organism. I am assuming descent from a single ET pod carrying
thousands, perhaps millions, of diverse kinds of organisms.

>> (Crick and Orgel's other point about molybdenum being an essential trace
>> element does count as evidence, albeit extremely weak given all the
>> unknowns.)

Having seen others' comments on the availability of molybdenum in sea
water, I withdraw my approval of that point.

>>> They also had some reasoning that belongs more to the philosophy of
>>> science than to science *per se*. They make reference to "the theorem
>>> of detailed cosmic
>>> reversibility" and apply it thus, near the beginning of the article:
>>
>>> If we are capable of infecting an
>>> *as yet* lifeless extrasolar planet,
>>> then, given that the time was available,
>>> another technological society might
>>> well have infected our planet when
>>> it was still lifeless.
>>
>> This is contradicted by the earlier point about cost.
>

> The *relevant* point came later ...

My mistake. I merely read it earlier.

>> No generation in
>> history has been able to bear the cost of directed panspermia,
>
> On the contrary, the Apollo program was only a few times less costly
> on a yearly basis than a directed panspermia program would be, and was
> dwarfed by our military spending.

And the cost of a DirPan program would greatly dwarf the Apollo program.

> Do you envision the future of the human race to be always living under
> the shadow of massive war?

It has always been thus.

> I don't, and I certainly think that a race
> that felt it was alone in the known universe would sober up about
> that, as Porky suggests in that famous Pogo comic strip.
>
>> nor have
>> humans ever consciously cooperated on a single project for dozens, much
>> less hundreds, of generations, as would be necessary for the cost to be
>> spread over time. The premise of Crick and Orgel's speculation above
>> being false, its conclusion is invalid.
>
> Getting to be quite a pessimist in your autumn years, aren't you?

Realistic.

[Mitchell Coffey]

On 12/7/2012 6:10 PM, pnyikos wrote:
> On Dec 7, 2:41 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:

[snip]

>> No generation in
>> history has been able to bear the cost of directed panspermia,
>
> On the contrary, the Apollo program was only a few times less costly
> on a yearly basis than a directed panspermia program would be, and was
> dwarfed by our military spending.

Do you have the numbers on this?

Mitchell Coffey

[John S. Wilkins]

Back in the 70s I heard that the entire US space program to that date
cost less than a single day's bombing of Hanoi at the height of the war.

I have no idea how that compares with a directed panspermia program. I
suspect that would cost more than the entire global output for many
years.

--
John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydney
Honorary Fellow, University of Melbourne
- http://evolvingthoughts.net

[jillery]

On Sun, 9 Dec 2012 17:20:59 +1100, jo...@wilkins.id.au (John S.
Wilkins) wrote:

>Mitchell Coffey <mitchell...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 12/7/2012 6:10 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>> > On Dec 7, 2:41 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
>> [snip]
>> >> No generation in
>> >> history has been able to bear the cost of directed panspermia,
>> >
>> > On the contrary, the Apollo program was only a few times less costly
>> > on a yearly basis than a directed panspermia program would be, and was
>> > dwarfed by our military spending.
>>
>> Do you have the numbers on this?
>>
>Back in the 70s I heard that the entire US space program to that date
>cost less than a single day's bombing of Hanoi at the height of the war.
>
>I have no idea how that compares with a directed panspermia program. I
>suspect that would cost more than the entire global output for many
>years.

Or, if some right-wing pundits are to be believed, the Obama debt.

[Nick Keighley]

On Dec 8, 1:54�am, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Dec 6, 4:29�pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> > > > > General Audience:
>
> > > > > Don't be fooled by the amoumt of text seen above: said text only
> > > > > conveys the claims Directed Panspermia. If the period at the end of
> > > > > this sentence were hollow the amount of evidence in existence
> > > > > supporting these collective claims could fit inside with plenty of
> > > > > room left over.
>

> > > > You might as well admit that you also think God created all earthly
> > > > animal species *de novo* and that no amount of evidence to the
> > > > contrary will ever be acknowledged by you to be evidence.
>

> > > Note the author doesn't contest my claim.
>
> > It's a matter of semantics, turkey. �I'm playing ball with your
> > excruciatingly demanding definition of "no evidence."

well there *is* no evidence. (the common code and the Mo don't really
cut it for me)

<snip>

> What does John Harshman have to do with the fact that you have ZERO
> evidence supporting space aliens responsible for biological First
> Cause?
>
> Again, I offer the degree of evasion seen as supporting my observation
> that your claims have no evidence in support, but insult
> intelligence.
>
> Peter: Where did you obtain the idea that space aliens seeded life on
> Earth? George Lucas, Gene Roddenbury, L. Ron Hubbard, H.G. Wells?

Crick, apparently. I don't recall most of those authors talking about
DP. (Later star treks did use PS to explain why everyone in the galaxy
looked like they'd dipped their hear in a bucket of silicone).

> Why
> should anyone take you seriously? I suspect your only refuge is
> credentials.
>
> General Audience:
>
> Peter Nyikos is a credentialed Evolutionist

credentialed? he has a card? can I have one? does it get us discounts
or anything?

> with a wide range of real
> knowledge. And let us remember that so called Christian Evolutionists
> accept God as responsible for biological First Cause and initiating
> the selection process. Yet Peter rejects in favor of space aliens who
> exist on some unidentified planet. And he rejects all UFO phenomena
> (unlike myself).

don't see the relevance

> Acceptance of science fiction concepts as responsible
> for biological First Cause, and rejection of God to have accomplished
> the same, equates to a violent ultra-irrational Atheism (one that even
> surpasses Richard Dawkins).

no. Really no it doesn't. You've been told this before, repeating it
makes you a wicked dissembler.

> Ray (Protestant Evangelical, Paleyan IDist)

Nick (satanic pan-adaptionist)

[Nick Keighley]

> >> responsible for biological First Cause,...
>
> read more �

trim your posts!

[Nick Keighley]

On Dec 7, 4:18 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Dec 6, 8:10 pm, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Nope. Earth, or Solar system origin trumps any hypothesis that requires
> > that 'somehow life began somewhere else, bred up a race of intelligent
> > beings who 4.5 billion years ago seeded the earth with biology'.
>
> I note that you do not produce any evidence, but merely pose questions
> that I'll be dealing with in Section C.
>
> And it isn't just the earth, btw.  I estimate about a million other
> planets as well, spread out over at least a million years.

how? How on earth could you estimate this?

> Crick and Orgel thought in those terms too.

[Nick Keighley]

On Dec 7, 4:38 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> On 12/7/12 7:19 AM, J.J. O'Shea wrote:> On Thu, 6 Dec 2012 22:21:08 -0500, jonathan wrote
> > (in article<7dWdnRb1ibEF_VzNnZ2dnUVZ_ridn...@giganews.com>):
>
> >> The notion that life must have had some mysterious help from outside the
> >> Earth, whether some 'god' or instead the more fashionable incarnation of
> >> 'aliens', is a result of the lack of understanding of how Nature works.
>
> > And that notion is why I consider that directed panspermia and OEC are joined
> > at the hip, and is a key reason why I consider dear Peter to be a
> > creationist.
>
> What? You consider everyone who doesn't understand how nature works to
> be a creationist? Please defend this strange definition.

this is why he keeps referring to Nykos as a creationsist and a liar
when he denies it.

[Nick Keighley]

On Dec 7, 10:34 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Dec 6, 10:21 pm, "jonathan" <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > "pnyikos" <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
> >news:f10b48e0-da74-4014...@10g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...

<snip>

> > The notion that life must have had some mysterious help
> > from outside the Earth,
>

> Enough already with these uses of "must have".

sure looks like it to me.

> Directed panspermia is
> a theory, and a hypothesis, with no imperatives about it.  Crick and
> Orgel refused to take a stand on how likely or unlikely the hypothesis
> is, and I haven't taken a firm stand either.
>
> I believe the odds favor directed panspermia vs earthly abiogenesis as
> the explanation for how life began. I even tend to believe the odds to
> be somewhere between 3:1 and 30:1, leaving undirected panspermia (A2)
> out of the picture.

these two paragraphs appear to be mutually contradictory!

where do you pluck your numbers from?

> But even that range depends upon a host of opinions about other
> probabilities.  More about this in Section C, which I hope to post
> before I go on my long holiday break.  [My family takes a much bigger
> priority then.]  I also hope to post Section D on Delivery Systems
> before Christmas also.

>
> > whether some 'god' or instead
> > the more fashionable incarnation of 'aliens', is a result
> > of the lack of understanding of how Nature works.
>

> We all share that, in spades.  See B2 thru B7.  More to come in
> Section C.

>
> > Spontaneous cyclic order, combined with relentless
> > hill-climbing, is what the universe does first, best
> > and almost every chance it gets.
>
> And part of that relentless hill-climbing is the evolution of a

> technologically able species such as ourselves.  Do you think the next

> million years will just be a continuation of the 40 years' "loss of
> nerve" since the last moon landing?

there's been a certain amount of technological innovation in that
time. Look at your phone!

> > Picture a countless number of almost totally random events
> > interconnected across infinitely ...nested scales of space
> > and time. However, each event isn't totally random, but the
> > deck is slightly stacked in favor of order and evolution
> > With each event creation and evolution receives a tiny push.
>
> Yup.
>
> > On the small scale this effect is almost imperceptible
> > but on the system level it becomes almost unstoppable.
>
> We have seen it in what has happened since the first prokaryotes.
> It's what came before then that we are greatly in the dark about.  See
> the joint statement by Joyce and Orgel in B7.  We have come only a
> tiny bit further in the intervening two decades.
>
> [prose poem snipped]
>
> > The Earth doesn't need any mysterious help from outside
> > to explain life on Earth.
>
> I never said anything about "need".  It's a question of what is more
> likely, that's all.

as others have pointed out you have a timing problem. Those aliens
(what's your objection to this term?) were jolly lucky to introduce
life at just the right time!

<snip>

[Nick Keighley]

On Dec 7, 7:41 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:

> On 12/6/12 12:14 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
>
>
> >                   A. Origins of the Theory of Directed Panspermia
>
> > Below, the questions are numbered.  They will be referred to in future
> > posts as A1, A2, etc.
>

> That should hinder communication effectively.  Few people are going to
> memorize your numbering scheme.

perhaps he should create a website?

[Mitchell Coffey]

I know you don't agree with said pundits, but it's such a part of the
conventional wisdom, and I haven't recovered from the election, that I
have to comment:

Yes, if one counts Obama as responsible for the recession, and for Bush
wars, spending programs and tax cuts, and for policies Obama wants to
change but the Republicans won't let him. And if one discounts the fact
that the Federal deficit has gone down under Obama.

Of course, military spending has increased under Obama, with Obama's
support. I don't think this is what those right-wing pundits are
objecting to, though.

Mitchell

[Paul J Gans]

John S. Wilkins <jo...@wilkins.id.au> wrote:
>Mitchell Coffey <mitchell...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> On 12/7/2012 6:10 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>> > On Dec 7, 2:41 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
>> [snip]
>> >> No generation in
>> >> history has been able to bear the cost of directed panspermia,
>> >
>> > On the contrary, the Apollo program was only a few times less costly
>> > on a yearly basis than a directed panspermia program would be, and was
>> > dwarfed by our military spending.
>>
>> Do you have the numbers on this?
>>
>Back in the 70s I heard that the entire US space program to that date
>cost less than a single day's bombing of Hanoi at the height of the war.

>I have no idea how that compares with a directed panspermia program. I
>suspect that would cost more than the entire global output for many
>years.

It is not possible to really estimate the cost of the Apollo
program because it benefitted from many technical advances
made in other programs paid for in other budgets. It even
benefitted from the Russian program since observing what
works is a major engineering aid.

[Paul J Gans]

Nick Keighley <nick_keigh...@hotmail.com> wrote:

>On Dec 7, 10:34?pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> On Dec 6, 10:21 pm, "jonathan" <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > "pnyikos" <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
>> >news:f10b48e0-da74-4014...@10g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...

><snip>

>> > The notion that life must have had some mysterious help
>> > from outside the Earth,
>>
>> Enough already with these uses of "must have".

>sure looks like it to me.

>> Directed panspermia is

>> a theory, and a hypothesis, with no imperatives about it. ?Crick and

>> Orgel refused to take a stand on how likely or unlikely the hypothesis
>> is, and I haven't taken a firm stand either.
>>
>> I believe the odds favor directed panspermia vs earthly abiogenesis as
>> the explanation for how life began. I even tend to believe the odds to
>> be somewhere between 3:1 and 30:1, leaving undirected panspermia (A2)
>> out of the picture.

>these two paragraphs appear to be mutually contradictory!

>where do you pluck your numbers from?

Forgive my piggybacking but I missed the above numbers in
the original post.

I could be wrong, but I do think that I've seen an estimate
by Nyikos that the odds on life starting on earth were under
1 percent. Indeed, if I recall correctly, that was why he
looked to panspermia as an answer.

[jillery]

On Sun, 09 Dec 2012 13:12:17 -0500, Mitchell Coffey

When it comes to economic projections, both DPers and right-wing
pundits seem to use the same economic model; pile it higher and
deeper, hit the fan with it, and see what sticks.

I guess the election campaign was too long for me, too.

[Ray Martinez]

On Dec 9, 5:11 am, Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nos...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

And you've been told that these denials, based on the argument seen
directly above, make no sense whatsoever.

Ray

[*Hemidactylus*]

To Ray you are an adversary. In the Old Testament view you are a satan
(or hassatan?), before he/it/they did hostile takeover on Gehenna and
grew horns.

Wray and Mobley _The Birth of Satan_.

http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Satan-Tracing-Devils-Biblical/dp/1403969337

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satan

[Mitchell Coffey]

On 12/9/2012 1:20 AM, John S. Wilkins wrote:
> Mitchell Coffey <mitchell...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 12/7/2012 6:10 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>>> On Dec 7, 2:41 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
>> [snip]
>>>> No generation in
>>>> history has been able to bear the cost of directed panspermia,
>>>
>>> On the contrary, the Apollo program was only a few times less costly
>>> on a yearly basis than a directed panspermia program would be, and was
>>> dwarfed by our military spending.
>>
>> Do you have the numbers on this?
>>
> Back in the 70s I heard that the entire US space program to that date
> cost less than a single day's bombing of Hanoi at the height of the war.
>
> I have no idea how that compares with a directed panspermia program. I
> suspect that would cost more than the entire global output for many
> years.

There are ways to extremely broadly estimate how much the PS Project
would cost in today's dollars. Some of these methods might be vaguely
useful if we wish to figure how much it would cost to build this project
in the environs of Earth in the near future. But that's not Peter's
actual claim; he claims that the Panspermists could afford and capture
the resources necessary to undertake the project. Yet this in fact he
cannot say.

Without making radically improbable assumptions, there is no possible
way to estimate the opportunity cost of building the PS project on a
utterly unfamiliar planet, of completely unknown composition and
configuration and resources, by a civilization about which nothing is
know, of unknown economic organization and history, by non-human
biological beings with unknowable needs and history, billions of years
ago and far, far away. Under those conditions, a moment of thought tell
us it would not be possible to say what the relative price of a pound of
aluminum would be relative to a pound of copper, or a pound of either to
a pound of the primary hull material of Throoming space probes,
unknowium. Or how many Throom-hours of labor go into the fabrication of
ten square meters of Throomian space probe hull, or how many pounds of
copper can be bought at the standard hourly labor-rate of a qualified
Throomian unknowium machinist. Or exactly what it is Throomians are
doing when they are said to "labor."

Imagine then the berserker courage involved in writing a sentence like

"On the contrary, the Apollo program was only a few times less costly
on a yearly basis than a directed panspermia program would be, and was
dwarfed by our military spending."

Peter tries to ameliorate his economic estimate by claiming that "The
project might grow out of a long project of simply exploring the
planets of other stars with instrumental probes, and during that time
the panspermists could be expected to mine a great many asteroids or
moons of their own 'solar' system, greatly expanding the resources at
their disposal." It might grow out of such a long project; Peter doesn't
seem to realize that every time his affordability analysis depends on
being hedged by speculating that the project might be done is a certain
way, and that doing it that certain way way might help overcome some
issue, he might be making the project that less probable. More
importantly, his subjunctive claim about mining asteroids and moons
merely shows that he misinformed about the importance of metallic
primary extraction industries to the wealth of advanced industries, much
as science fiction evokes extraterrestrial mining colonies as a why to
present space travel as self-financing.

One thing may possibly be said about the Throomian economy. I think
Peter depends on the likelihood that there probably would have been less
metal then. This would make it less available, unless it were on the
planet more locally concentrated - see previous paragraph about
dependence upon subjunctive claims. More to my point, I would speculate
that without readily extractable metals laying about where people with
simple fires may discover and smelt them, the sort of civilization that
might eventually go into space is not possible. I'm not saying
intelligent beings or civilization wouldn't be possible, just the sort
that might find itself in space someday. I'm not claiming this makes PS
impossible, just that much less probable, and that Peter must reduce his
probability assumptions appropriately.

In all, PS advocates cannot say anything about the affordability of PS,
except possibly to error toward the possibility that it would not be
affordable. Since PS would be a breathtakingly involved industrial
project, far from being a secondary point, I would say that one can say
nothing about it's affordability is equivalent to saying that it is
unreasonable to make any probabilistic statement about PS at all.

One related point. Peter writes "The expenses would be spread out over
thousands, perhaps millions of years in the sort of project that Crick
and Orgel had in mind." Again, see my comment about depending on
subjunctive claims. More importantly, the more time passes, the more the
probability that some kind of organizational, economic, political,
social, moral, or natural breakdown might at some point occur. This is
not to say that some such will occur, just that the more the time, the
more like; it's a matter of probability, not pessimism v. optimism. The
point must be fitted into ones probabilities. And see yet again my my
comment about depending on subjunctive claims.

Mitchell Coffey

[jillery]

On Sun, 09 Dec 2012 23:58:43 -0500, Mitchell Coffey

I agree with AOTA, but if any DPer replies to this, he will likely
refer to Projects Icarus and Daedalus, which were feasibility studies
on unmanned interstellar space probes. My experience with cost
projections for untested technologies is they are almost entirely
useless.

Also, please note the DPer's reliance on "annual cost". Development
costs must be paid up front and can't reasonably be amortized over the
1000-year life of the project. IIUC long-running projects separate
operational costs for exactly that reason. Which is another reason
why the DPer's numbers don't add up.

Just one small question, and I hate to ask it, but what does "PS"
mean?

[Burkhard]

On Dec 10, 4:58 am, Mitchell Coffey <mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 12/9/2012 1:20 AM, John S. Wilkins wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Mitchell Coffey <mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> On 12/7/2012 6:10 PM, pnyikos wrote:
> >>> On Dec 7, 2:41 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
> >> [snip]
> >>>>    No generation in
> >>>> history has been able to bear the cost of directed panspermia,
>
> >>> On the contrary, the Apollo program was only a few times less costly
> >>> on a yearly basis than a directed panspermia program would be, and was
> >>> dwarfed by our military spending.
>
> >> Do you have the numbers on this?
>
> > Back in the 70s I heard that the entire US space program to that date
> > cost less than a single day's bombing of Hanoi at the height of the war.
>
> > I have no idea how that compares with a directed panspermia program. I
> > suspect that would cost more than the entire global output for many
> > years.
>
> There are ways to extremely broadly estimate how much the PS Project
> would cost in today's dollars. Some of these methods might be vaguely
> useful if we wish to figure how much it would cost to build this project
> in the environs of Earth in the near future. But that's not Peter's
> actual claim; he claims that the Panspermists could afford and capture
> the resources necessary to undertake the project. Yet this in fact he
> cannot say.
>

Sorry, can I stop you right there? Economic costs? That's age of
scarcity stuff.
when money or similar measures were used as a crude rationing tool.
(cf the Iain
M Bank's Culture novels) Obviously, the aliens grocked the direct
transfer of energy
into matter a long time ago, so don't need to worry about these
things. Or they are
plant descendants that need for their personal well-being noting but
sunlight, and
treat all the engineering etc stuff just as a hobby to pass time, so
they can spend all
resources on this. Or they produce space probes as side effect of
their genetically
altered digestive tracks.

point being, it is difficult enough to calculate the costs for _our_
economy, _our_ priorities
_our_ way of doing things. There is no reason to believe that for the
aliens, the concepts even
make sense. It is as futile as speculating about their motives. Unless
you think that through a
remarkable feast of convergent evolution, a species on another
planet, billions of years ago
and with possible a totally different biology right down to the
molecular level thinks, works and
socialises just like your average common room in a 21th century US
university.

That's one of the reasons why the idea is so sterile, and the approach
best left to SF writers who can at
least put their speculations into good prose.

[Mitchell Coffey]

On Dec 10, 1:11 am, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 09 Dec 2012 23:58:43 -0500, Mitchell Coffey
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> <mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On 12/9/2012 1:20 AM, John S. Wilkins wrote:

"Panspermia." I forgot the standard term, "DP."

Mitchell Coffey

[Mitchell Coffey]

Agreed. One of my points is that every time DP must evoke an otherwise
unsupported just-so story of some degree of improbability, it is that
much less probable. And, key point here, the DP argument is one of
relative probabilities.

Mitchell Coffey

[Mitchell Coffey]

On Dec 9, 4:41 pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
> John S. Wilkins <j...@wilkins.id.au> wrote:

>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >Mitchell Coffey <mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On 12/7/2012 6:10 PM, pnyikos wrote:
> >> > On Dec 7, 2:41 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
> >> [snip]
> >> >>   No generation in
> >> >> history has been able to bear the cost of directed panspermia,
>
> >> > On the contrary, the Apollo program was only a few times less costly
> >> > on a yearly basis than a directed panspermia program would be, and was
> >> > dwarfed by our military spending.
>
> >> Do you have the numbers on this?
>
> >Back in the 70s I heard that the entire US space program to that date
> >cost less than a single day's bombing of Hanoi at the height of the war.
> >I have no idea how that compares with a directed panspermia program. I
> >suspect that would cost more than the entire global output for many
> >years.
>
> It is not possible to really estimate the cost of the Apollo

> program because it benefited from many technical advances

> made in other programs paid for in other budgets.  It even

> benefited from the Russian program since observing what

> works is a major engineering aid.

I suspect Peter arrives at his DP project budget projections via the
econometric method I shall call "colonic extraction."

And, as I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread today, the cost of
the DP project in Earth terms is irrelevant. Knowing virtually nothing
about Planet Throomia and environs, we have little or no bases for
estimating opportunity costs there. For instance, as we know nothing
about gravity well, we cannot begin to estimate the resources consumed
in escaping it. Similarly for the well of it's sun or suns. We know
nothing about the availability of primary minerals on Throomia, or on
those nearby moons and asteroids Peter evokes with pixie dust and a
smile. Note the issue isn't primarily even the prevalence of, say,
metals in the crust, but the availability of ore concentrations near
the surface. (Note that this notion is probably even more fundamental
when considering the probability of established intelligent life
developing an industrial civilization.)

Mitchell

[Paul J Gans]

Mitchell Coffey <mitchel...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Dec 9, 4:41?pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:

[snips]

>> It is not possible to really estimate the cost of the Apollo
>> program because it benefited from many technical advances

>> made in other programs paid for in other budgets. ?It even

>> benefited from the Russian program since observing what
>> works is a major engineering aid.

>I suspect Peter arrives at his DP project budget projections via the
>econometric method I shall call "colonic extraction."

Don't knock it. It is clear that many people in the US do both
economics and election polling by that very methid.

>And, as I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread today, the cost of
>the DP project in Earth terms is irrelevant. Knowing virtually nothing
>about Planet Throomia and environs, we have little or no bases for
>estimating opportunity costs there. For instance, as we know nothing
>about gravity well, we cannot begin to estimate the resources consumed
>in escaping it. Similarly for the well of it's sun or suns. We know
>nothing about the availability of primary minerals on Throomia, or on
>those nearby moons and asteroids Peter evokes with pixie dust and a
>smile. Note the issue isn't primarily even the prevalence of, say,
>metals in the crust, but the availability of ore concentrations near
>the surface. (Note that this notion is probably even more fundamental
>when considering the probability of established intelligent life
>developing an industrial civilization.)

What about the speculative fact that Throomians developed
interdimensional transpost and could literally step from here
to there without crossing what to us is the intermediate
distance.

Of course, being a practical people, various way-stations were
set up to serve as "bathrooms", because Throomians are a
somewhat diarrhetic species.

And now you know how the earth was fertilized.

[pnyikos]

On Dec 9, 8:16 am, Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nos...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

Well, for one thing, I was following the lead of Crick and Orgel, who
also talked about projects lasting millions of years. In fact they
wrote in terms of seeding "most planets in the galaxy."

> > Crick and Orgel thought in those terms too.

But I'm trying to make a reasonable estimate for the mean number of
planets seeded per panspermist project. I believe abiogenesis is a
less-than-once-in-a-galaxy event, so that in some galaxies the
panspermists might only seed a few planets, in some as many as Crick
and Orgel suggest we might (if we find outselves alone in our galaxy),
but there is a good reason I think the average big project will only
involve a million planets.

It is the law of diminishing returns. Once the million really
suitable planets closest to the home of the panspermists have been
seeded, doubling the distance the probes go will only increase the
number by a factor of 4, instead of a factor of 8, because the
thickness of the galaxy has been reached.

If the panspermists hold themselves to about the thickness of the
galaxy, then there will still be suitable planets moving into that
part of the galaxy from time to time, but the rate at which the
project goes forward can be expected to slacken. And, judging from
the funk into which NASA has slid, that might mean the effective end
of the project in a relatively short while.

By the way, I happen to believe that abiogenesis is a less-than-once-
in-a-universe event even in a universe as well suited to the evolution
of life (once it gets started) as this one, but I also happen to
believe that there is a "near-infinity" of universes, so I'm just
expanding the scope of my reasoning. Once in a galaxy on the average
is good enough for my purposes.

[John Harshman]

On 12/10/12 10:30 AM, pnyikos wrote:
> On Dec 9, 8:16 am, Nick Keighley<nick_keighley_nos...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>> On Dec 7, 4:18 am, pnyikos<nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Dec 6, 8:10 pm, John Stockwell<john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Nope. Earth, or Solar system origin trumps any hypothesis that requires
>>>> that 'somehow life began somewhere else, bred up a race of intelligent
>>>> beings who 4.5 billion years ago seeded the earth with biology'.
>>
>>> I note that you do not produce any evidence, but merely pose questions
>>> that I'll be dealing with in Section C.
>>
>>> And it isn't just the earth, btw. I estimate about a million other
>>> planets as well, spread out over at least a million years.
>>
>> how? How on earth could you estimate this?
>
> Well, for one thing, I was following the lead of Crick and Orgel, who
> also talked about projects lasting millions of years. In fact they
> wrote in terms of seeding "most planets in the galaxy."

How on earth could they have estimated that? It really isn't a very good
argument to say "somebody else said so", even if the somebody else is
famous.

>>> Crick and Orgel thought in those terms too.
>
> But I'm trying to make a reasonable estimate for the mean number of
> planets seeded per panspermist project. I believe abiogenesis is a
> less-than-once-in-a-galaxy event, so that in some galaxies the
> panspermists might only seed a few planets, in some as many as Crick
> and Orgel suggest we might (if we find outselves alone in our galaxy),
> but there is a good reason I think the average big project will only
> involve a million planets.

Your "so that" seems to apply that what's after it follows from what's
before it, but I don't see that.

> It is the law of diminishing returns. Once the million really
> suitable planets closest to the home of the panspermists have been
> seeded, doubling the distance the probes go will only increase the
> number by a factor of 4, instead of a factor of 8, because the
> thickness of the galaxy has been reached.

> If the panspermists hold themselves to about the thickness of the
> galaxy, then there will still be suitable planets moving into that
> part of the galaxy from time to time, but the rate at which the
> project goes forward can be expected to slacken. And, judging from
> the funk into which NASA has slid, that might mean the effective end
> of the project in a relatively short while.

It amazes me that a project which was supposedly sustained for a million
years would collapse because of a reduction in prospects by a factor of
2. This is a good reason? Why didn't it collapse earlier?

> By the way, I happen to believe that abiogenesis is a less-than-once-
> in-a-universe event even in a universe as well suited to the evolution
> of life (once it gets started) as this one, but I also happen to
> believe that there is a "near-infinity" of universes, so I'm just
> expanding the scope of my reasoning. Once in a galaxy on the average
> is good enough for my purposes.

So your position is that even in a universe miraculously fine-tuned for
life, life is still vanishingly unlikely to arise. That's odd.

[pnyikos]

On Dec 7, 10:02 pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
> pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >The very person who last essentially asked B4 also made a huge deal
> >about planetary orbits being "chaotic" [in a very precise technical
> >sense] and how *he* thought a space probe could be expected to miss
> >its target planet after a mere few thousand years en route from
> >launch.
>
> [snip]
>
> As the person referred to above, I must object.

FYI, Paul, "I object" does not simply mean, "I wish to take the
floor." [Have you been watching too many courtroom dramas?] :-)

> The background
> includes your claim that the panspermists scouted out likely
> solar systems using ships that might take tens of thousands
> of years to complete their voyage.

...as an upper bound. "A few thousand years" is compatible with
that.

"few" is a relative term. I had Crick and Orgel's talking in terms of
10^8 years at the back of my mind.

> That would then be followed by seed ships taking about as long
> to reach the designated systems.

Yup.

> Now I'm glad to see that we finally agree that n-body orbits
> about a central mass with n > 1 are chaotic.

You mean it took you this long to realize what the very precise
technical meaning of "chaotic" is? I told you already MONTHS ago that
the 3-body problem is chaotic except in special cases. This was while
you were still parasitizing the everyday connotations of "chaotic" and
never explaining what you meant by the word.

And you still haven't got it quite right. If there are only two
bodies and the central mass, and one of those two bodies is
considerably more massive than the other, and there are no other
influences, the two Trojan points lead to stable orbits for all
concerned.

>  Just how long
> the period of stability might last depends on  the initial
> conditions of all the major (and minor) objects orbit the
> system.

What period of stability?

> Early in the solar system's history the orbits were quite
> chaotic.

Sure, but you have yet to quantify "very chaotic"--not that it
matters.

> That much is KNOWN.  Thus the time of observation
> for the seeder's ships must have been after this period.

Yup. If the seeders had started during the very chaotic period, they
would have bypassed OUR solar system, because conditions on any of the
planets would have been very bad for life. It was only after the
intense asteroid bombardment was over that it had any chance to
flourish.


> The solar system seems to have calmed down after that.
>
> This involves the problem that the seeders had to identify
> our solar system as a plausible seeding candidate even
> earlier without knowing the stability of the system at all.

Utter bilge. We would not be here in the first place. See above
("bypassed").

> That was the reason why I raised chaos as a problem.  I
> had hoped for a reasoned answer from you, but I never got
> one.

You got one, but to understand it, you would have to understand the
*spirit* of the Anthropic Principle as well as the letter of the
definitions.

I tried all kinds of ways of explaining it to you, but you are color-
blind and tone-deaf to the concept.

Concluded in next reply.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 7, 10:02 pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
> pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

Repeating a fair amount from my first reply to establish continuity:

If the seeders had started during the very chaotic period, they would
have bypassed OUR solar system, because conditions on any of the
planets would have been very bad for life. It was only after the
intense asteroid bombardment was over that it had any chance to
flourish.

> The solar system seems to have calmed down after that.
>
> This involves the problem that the seeders had to identify
> our solar system as a plausible seeding candidate even
> earlier without knowing the stability of the system at all.

Utter bilge. We would not be here in the first place. See above
("bypassed").

> That was the reason why I raised chaos as a problem. I
> had hoped for a reasoned answer from you, but I never got
> one.

You got one, but to understand it, you would have to understand the
*spirit* of the Anthropic Principle as well as the letter of the
definitions.

I tried all kinds of ways of explaining it to you, but you are color-
blind and tone-deaf to the concept.

> My next step, never taken due to lack of response, was
> that we know that the earth formed about 4.5 billion years
> ago. There seems already to have been life on earth about
> 3.5 billion years ago. Some sources claim that photosynthesis
> already existed by then. Thus the seeding window less than
> 1 billion years. In fact it was much shorter since the
> early crust was in "turmoil" due to impact heating, heat
> stemming from the core, and outgassing.

I think we DID go through all this elementary exercise.

> So it seems that the seeders got lucky and reached the
> earth during the very short window of opportunity of
> much less than 1 billion years.

You got it backwards--almost. WE are lucky that the panspermists did
their project after things had calmed down. We wouldn't exist
otherwise, if my hypothesis of the rarity of abiogenesis, and the
rarity of intelligent life coming into existence even after
abiogenesis, is correct.

I say "after things had calmed down" because if my hypothesis is
correct, the panspermists could have started their project as much as
5 billion years afterwards--not more, because the sun would make
things too hot for the earth, and then they would have to shift to
Mars, or even further out. It's just that WE would not be here.

> There are many other objections as well, but absent any
> meaningful discussion of what is a chemical and physical
> problem, there's no point in bringing them up.

The "problem" may stem from the fact that you are much closer to
Maritnez's way of thinking than mine. Your getting things backwards
may have been due to something like this at the back of your mind:

Kismet [= fate -- you're an atheist, aren't you?]
decreed that human beings would exist on earth.
Thus the panspermists were very lucky that they
were the means whereby Kismet's decree
was realized.

Peter Nyikos

[Burkhard]

Well, yes and no. I would say that I have no idea how likely or
unlikely the event is, having no basis whatsoever. It seems to me that
you can't one the one hand criticise peter that his probabilities come
out of thin air, and then make a probabilistic argument that it is
very unlikely that an alien civilisation would find the economic means
to launch such a program. I agree with the first criticism, and
therefore throw out the second. It might be that it is extremely
probable that a civilisation arranges its economic activity in such a
way that programs like this are child's play. Maybe we are galactic
retards and statistical outliers in the way in which we plan and
carry out large scale projects. I have no idea, and neither has
anybody else. DP may be common as muck, easy and ubiquitous - but
then, so could be the emergence of live. Without more data, who
knows?

[pnyikos]

On Dec 9, 8:30 am, Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nos...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

> On Dec 7, 10:34 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Dec 6, 10:21 pm, "jonathan" <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > "pnyikos" <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
> > >news:f10b48e0-da74-4014...@10g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...
>
> <snip>
>
> > > The notion that life must have had some mysterious help
> > > from outside the Earth,
>
> > Enough already with these uses of "must have".
>
> sure looks like it to me.

Why? Didn't my talk about the odds below rule that out for you?

> > Directed panspermia is
> > a theory, and a hypothesis, with no imperatives about it.  Crick and
> > Orgel refused to take a stand on how likely or unlikely the hypothesis
> > is, and I haven't taken a firm stand either.
>
> > I believe the odds favor directed panspermia vs earthly abiogenesis as
> > the explanation for how life began. I even tend to believe the odds to
> > be somewhere between 3:1 and 30:1, leaving undirected panspermia (A2)
> > out of the picture.
>
> these two paragraphs appear to be mutually contradictory!

Huh? What's contradictory about "hypothesis with no imperatives about
it" and the range of odds of which I speak?

I said I haven't taken a firm stand on it. I am quite open to the
possibility that the odds favor abiogenesis. But so far, all I've
seen are innumerable variations on Ockham's Razor, which are close to
useless, and the objections I wrote about in B3-B7,

> where do you pluck your numbers from?

Did you catch the long-running thread on the expansion of the Drake
equation? Nobody except Mark Isaak wanted to stick his neck out in
estimating the odds for the various factors, and even he didn't try
much in the way of justification.

I've done a lot of thinking about them, and I'll start talking about
that thinking after I've posted Section C of the FAQ (see earlier
comment about that below).

Here's a little clue. In the original Drake equation there is a
factor, f_i, of the fraction of planets where life has begun, going on
to develop intelligent life. Astronomers like Carl Sagan have been
quite sanguine about that, with the three sources (one of which was
Sagan's _Cosmos_) not wanting to go below 1/100. I am much less
sanguine.

Here is another clue: compare 30:1 or 3:1 with what I told you in my
other reply to you so far today, where "million" was the subject of a
related topic.

> > But even that range depends upon a host of opinions about other
> > probabilities.  More about this in Section C, which I hope to post
> > before I go on my long holiday break.  [My family takes a much bigger
> > priority then.]  I also hope to post Section D on Delivery Systems
> > before Christmas also.
>
> > > whether some 'god' or instead
> > > the more fashionable incarnation of 'aliens', is a result
> > > of the lack of understanding of how Nature works.
>
> > We all share that, in spades.  See B2 thru B7.  More to come in
> > Section C.
>
> > > Spontaneous cyclic order, combined with relentless
> > > hill-climbing, is what the universe does first, best
> > > and almost every chance it gets.
>
> > And part of that relentless hill-climbing is the evolution of a
> > technologically able species such as ourselves.  Do you think the next
> > million years will just be a continuation of the 40 years' "loss of
> > nerve" since the last moon landing?
>
> there's been a certain amount of technological innovation in that
> time. Look at your phone!

And lots of other consumer-oriented advances. But look at the mess
NASA is in: Bush's idea of a base on the moon as a preparation to a
Mars visit seems to have been shelved. Obama apparently substituted
an asteroid, but NASA has no asteroid picked out yet, and no
commitment to a timetable.

Still, I am optimistic that space exploration will be revived in
earnest some time in this century, although I am getting pessimistic
about it happening in my own lifetime.

[snip]

> > > The Earth doesn't need any mysterious help from outside
> > > to explain life on Earth.
>
> > I never said anything about "need".  It's a question of what is more
> > likely, that's all.
>
> as others have pointed out you have a timing problem.

others = Paul Gans?
This has been his hobbyhorse for months now, despite every effort of
mine to explain the basic fallacy in his thinking..

> Those aliens
> (what's your objection to this term?) were jolly lucky to introduce
> life at just the right time!

I suspect you haven't thought much about this, but are misled by the
fact that nobody has pointed out to Paul how he still hasn't grasped
my point about the fallacy after I've made myself figuratively blue in
the face trying to explain it to him.

As I told him, he has it backwards. WE are lucky that the

panspermists did their project after things had calmed down.
We wouldn't exist otherwise, if my hypothesis of the rarity of
abiogenesis, and the rarity of intelligent life coming into
existence even after abiogenesis, is correct.

By "after things had calmed down" I mean in our solar system, and I
mean the point at which life could reasonably be expected to take hold
and not be wiped out by an asteroid impact as colossal as the one that
formed Mare Imbrium on the moon. [I'm not sure how much smaller an
asteroid would be to have that effect, but perhaps the asteroid that
formed the Orientale basin would have had that effect too.]

[pnyikos]

On Dec 9, 4:52 pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:

> Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nos...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >On Dec 7, 10:34?pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >> On Dec 6, 10:21 pm, "jonathan" <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > "pnyikos" <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
> >> >news:f10b48e0-da74-4014...@10g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...
> ><snip>
> >> > The notion that life must have had some mysterious help
> >> > from outside the Earth,
>
> >> Enough already with these uses of "must have".
> >sure looks like it to me.
> >> Directed panspermia is
> >> a theory, and a hypothesis, with no imperatives about it. ?Crick and
> >> Orgel refused to take a stand on how likely or unlikely the hypothesis
> >> is, and I haven't taken a firm stand either.
>
> >> I believe the odds favor directed panspermia vs earthly abiogenesis as
> >> the explanation for how life began. I even tend to believe the odds to
> >> be somewhere between 3:1 and 30:1, leaving undirected panspermia (A2)
> >> out of the picture.
> >these two paragraphs appear to be mutually contradictory!

Can *you* figure out why Nick thought the paragraphs to be mutually
contradictory, Paul?

> >where do you pluck your numbers from?
>
> Forgive my piggybacking but I missed the above numbers in
> the original post.
>
> I could be wrong, but I do think that I've seen an estimate
> by Nyikos that the odds on life starting on earth were under
> 1 percent.

I don't recall saying that. I may have said that the odds *might* be
that low, but now I think it more realistic to guess at a higher
number, though still below 50%.

But you seem to be thinking about a totally different number, the odds
against life starting on earth IN THE ABSENCE OF any kind of
panspermia--via homegrown abiogenesis.

THOSE odds were estimated by me to be literally astronomical, and I'm
sticking to that in the absence of any solid argument to the contrary
since I stopped being a "Mother Earth did it easily" devotee in 1996.

> Indeed, if I recall correctly, that was why he
> looked to panspermia as an answer.

Actually the two went hand in hand. One Nobel Laureate biochemist
bungled his enthusiastic "easy abiogenesis" exposition badly, another
emphasized a colossal range of uncertainty about it while proposing
panspermia as an alternative.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 8, 9:39 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:

> On 12/7/12 2:34 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
> > On Dec 6, 10:21 pm, "jonathan" <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > [much snipped]

> >> Spontaneous cyclic order, combined with relentless
> >> hill-climbing, is what the universe does first, best
> >> and almost every chance it gets.
>
> > And part of that relentless hill-climbing is the evolution of a
> > technologically able species such as ourselves.
>

> "Technologically able species" constitute, at a generous estimate, about
> 0.0000001% of species and about 0.0001% of earth's history.  It's hard
> for me to take those numbers as indicative.

I was humoring Jonathan to some extent. He seemed to think that we
are the result of evolution that started with abiogenesis on earth,
and so I was transferring his optimism to the hypothesized planet of
the panspermists. I happen to think that the following prognosis is
needlessly pessimistic, and I apply the theorem of complete cosmic
reversibility to my more optimistic belief.

> > Do you think the next
> > million years will just be a continuation of the 40 years' "loss of
> > nerve" since the last moon landing?
>

> In the next million years, there will be at least one dark age far worse
> than the one that now gets capitalized.

Really? What do you think might precipitate it?

> I would hypothesize more such
> dark ages, except there is a decent chance humans would never get out of
> the first one.

I'm all ears.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 9, 1:20 am, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> Mitchell Coffey <mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/7/2012 6:10 PM, pnyikos wrote:
> > > On Dec 7, 2:41 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
> > [snip]
> > >>   No generation in
> > >> history has been able to bear the cost of directed panspermia,
>
> > > On the contrary, the Apollo program was only a few times less costly
> > > on a yearly basis than a directed panspermia program would be, and was
> > > dwarfed by our military spending.
>
> > Do you have the numbers on this?
>
> Back in the 70s I heard that the entire US space program to that date
> cost less than a single day's bombing of Hanoi at the height of the war.
>
> I have no idea how that compares with a directed panspermia program. I
> suspect that would cost more than the entire global output for many
> years.

You seem to be thinking of a crash program in our state of
technology. But as I've said elsewhere, I expect the *beginning* of
the project to be the culmination of perhaps a thousand years of
preliminary exploration, at the end of which a lot of technology would
already be in place.

And so I am sticking by my original estimate: only a few times greater
than the Apollo project, on a year by year basis.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 9, 4:41 pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
> John S. Wilkins <j...@wilkins.id.au> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

> >Mitchell Coffey <mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On 12/7/2012 6:10 PM, pnyikos wrote:
> >> > On Dec 7, 2:41 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
> >> [snip]
> >> >>   No generation in
> >> >> history has been able to bear the cost of directed panspermia,
>
> >> > On the contrary, the Apollo program was only a few times less costly
> >> > on a yearly basis than a directed panspermia program would be, and was
> >> > dwarfed by our military spending.
>
> >> Do you have the numbers on this?
>
> >Back in the 70s I heard that the entire US space program to that date
> >cost less than a single day's bombing of Hanoi at the height of the war.
> >I have no idea how that compares with a directed panspermia program. I
> >suspect that would cost more than the entire global output for many
> >years.

As I said to Wilkins just now:

You seem to be thinking of a crash program in our state of
technology. But as I've said elsewhere, I expect the *beginning* of
the project to be the culmination of perhaps a thousand years of
preliminary exploration, at the end of which a lot of technology would
already be in place.

And so I am sticking by my original estimate: only a few times greater
than the Apollo project, on a year by year basis.

> It is not possible to really estimate the cost of the Apollo
> program because it benefitted from many technical advances
> made in other programs paid for in other budgets.

I'm comparing apples with apples here. Did you think Wilkins was
comparing apples with oranges?

At worst, I'm comparing Jonathan apples with Gala apples, figuratively
speaking.

> It even
> benefitted from the Russian program since observing what
> works is a major engineering aid.

After a thousand years, there would have been ample opportunity to
observe what works for interstellar space probes.

Peter Nyikos

[J. J. Lodder J. J. Lodder]

A good SF author will easily come up with a zero cost method.
(after an initial investment in genetic engineering)

See Larry Niven for 'stage trees',
which grow a core of solid rocket fuel,
and when ignited in some way at maturity
burn in stages to get their payload of genetic material
off-planet and out into interstellar space.

Jan

[pnyikos]

On Dec 9, 1:12 pm, Mitchell Coffey <mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 12/9/2012 2:42 AM, jillery wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

> > On Sun, 9 Dec 2012 17:20:59 +1100, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S.
> > Wilkins) wrote:

>
> >> Mitchell Coffey <mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>> On 12/7/2012 6:10 PM, pnyikos wrote:
> >>>> On Dec 7, 2:41 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
> >>> [snip]
> >>>>> No generation in
> >>>>> history has been able to bear the cost of directed panspermia,
>
> >>>> On the contrary, the Apollo program was only a few times less costly
> >>>> on a yearly basis than a directed panspermia program would be, and was
> >>>> dwarfed by our military spending.
>
> >>> Do you have the numbers on this?
>
> >> Back in the 70s I heard that the entire US space program to that date
> >> cost less than a single day's bombing of Hanoi at the height of the war.
>
> >> I have no idea how that compares with a directed panspermia program. I
> >> suspect that would cost more than the entire global output for many
> >> years.
>
> > Or, if some right-wing pundits are to be believed, the Obama debt.

Right wing pundits have nothing to do with it. I think the yearly
cost of a directed panspermia project would be many times less than
the amount by which Obama has added to the national debt each year.

> I know you don't agree with said pundits, but it's such a part of the
> conventional wisdom, and I haven't recovered from the election, that I
> have to comment:
>
> Yes, if one counts Obama as responsible for the recession, and for Bush
> wars, spending programs and tax cuts, and for policies Obama wants to
> change but the Republicans won't let him. And if one discounts the fact
> that the Federal deficit has gone down under Obama.

You and jillery seem to have a weakness for completely losing sight of
what the discussion was all about. I think you need to cut back a bit
on your political partisanship.

You also did it [in the broad sense of political partisanship] where I
was concerned, in a thread involving prawnster.

Thanks for the CC, by the way; I was hoping to reply today but may
have to wait until later this week.

[additional talk about Obama and pundits deleted]

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 10, 11:09 am, Mitchell Coffey <mitchell.cof...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Dec 9, 4:41 pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > John S. Wilkins <j...@wilkins.id.au> wrote:
>
> > >Mitchell Coffey <mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> On 12/7/2012 6:10 PM, pnyikos wrote:
> > >> > On Dec 7, 2:41 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
> > >> [snip]
> > >> >> No generation in
> > >> >> history has been able to bear the cost of directed panspermia,
>
> > >> > On the contrary, the Apollo program was only a few times less costly
> > >> > on a yearly basis than a directed panspermia program would be, and was
> > >> > dwarfed by our military spending.
>
> > >> Do you have the numbers on this?
>
> > >Back in the 70s I heard that the entire US space program to that date
> > >cost less than a single day's bombing of Hanoi at the height of the war.
> > >I have no idea how that compares with a directed panspermia program. I
> > >suspect that would cost more than the entire global output for many
> > >years.
>
> > It is not possible to really estimate the cost of the Apollo
> > program because it benefited from many technical advances
> > made in other programs paid for in other budgets. It even
> > benefited from the Russian program since observing what
> > works is a major engineering aid.
>
> I suspect Peter arrives at his DP project budget projections via the
> econometric method I shall call "colonic extraction."

You can take this ignorant comment of yours and shove it you-know-
where.

Or else, try reading my reply I did to another post of yours a few
minutes ago. And if that doesn't help, the one I did immediately
before, to Gans. And if that still doesn't help, the one I did before
that to Wilkins.

> And, as I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread today, the cost of
> the DP project in Earth terms is irrelevant. Knowing virtually nothing
> about Planet Throomia and environs, we have little or no bases for
> estimating opportunity costs there. For instance, as we know nothing
> about gravity well, we cannot begin to estimate the resources consumed
> in escaping it.

Assume a mean value like that for earth. Sheesh.

> Similarly for the well of it's sun or suns. We know
> nothing about the availability of primary minerals on Throomia, or on
> those nearby moons and asteroids

...which are naturally to be expected somewhere in that planetary
system, given the current theories about how solar systems form.

[snip puerile sneering]

> Note the issue isn't primarily even the prevalence of, say,
> metals in the crust, but the availability of ore concentrations near
> the surface.

And given that a lot of meteorites are almost pure iron, one can
expect resources buried in the home planet to be near the surface of
the asteroids and meteoroids.

> (Note that this notion is probably even more fundamental
> when considering the probability of established intelligent life
> developing an industrial civilization.)

Have you ever heard of graphene? Of nonmetallic superconductors?

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 07:20:34 -0800 (PST), Mitchell Coffey
<mitchel...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

>> Just one small question, and I hate to ask it, but what does "PS"
>> mean?
>
>"Panspermia." I forgot the standard term, "DP."

I'm flexible. I just didn't know.

[jillery]

>> much less probable. And, key point here, the DP argument is one of

>> relative probabilities.


>Well, yes and no. I would say that I have no idea how likely or
>unlikely the event is, having no basis whatsoever. It seems to me that
>you can't one the one hand criticise peter that his probabilities come
>out of thin air, and then make a probabilistic argument that it is
>very unlikely that an alien civilisation would find the economic means
>to launch such a program. I agree with the first criticism, and
>therefore throw out the second. It might be that it is extremely
>probable that a civilisation arranges its economic activity in such a
>way that programs like this are child's play. Maybe we are galactic
>retards and statistical outliers in the way in which we plan and
>carry out large scale projects. I have no idea, and neither has
>anybody else. DP may be common as muck, easy and ubiquitous - but
>then, so could be the emergence of live. Without more data, who
>knows?

IIUC your point is that is isn't reasonable to complain about WAGS and
then argue one's own WAG. IIUC Mitchell Coffey's point is one of
increasing improbability arising from each just-so explanation, which
applies regardless of the validity of the initial premise. If so, I
agree with both of these statements, but I think your statement isn't
a fair representation of what Mitchell wrote.

Regardless of *how* DPists are supposed to do what they do, such a
project requires a certain absolute amount of energy, time and
resources, all of which could as easily be put to use on other
projects. ISTM Mitchell's economic argument is a valid one. Whatever
DPists apply to DP is not available for other things, and so has
certain absolute economic cost. Unless, of course, the argument is
that DPists have practically unlimited time, energy, resources, and
the project is budgeted from their equivalent of petty cash.

As far as relative probabilities, whatever argument is made against
the probability of homegrown abiogenesis, also applies to the
abiogenesis of material DPists. OTOH the fact that life started on
Earth almost as soon as it could have, is good evidence that homegrown
abiogenesis is very likely. While the existence of DPists, and their
projects are pure speculation without any evidence whatsoever. The
entire concept is just-so explanations all the way down. There is no
practical difference between it and "Goddidit". Which is one reason
why it appeals to IDers.

[Mitchell Coffey]

Again, could you show your numbers?

Mitchell Coffey

[John Harshman]

On 12/10/12 3:42 PM, jillery wrote:

> OTOH the fact that life started on
> Earth almost as soon as it could have, is good evidence that homegrown
> abiogenesis is very likely.

I believe there actually is an argument here related to and in addition
to the one you present (which Peter consistently rejects). How likely
are the hypothetical panspermists to have been active at exactly the
point at which earth first becomes amenable to life? If they'd been
active earlier, then of course we wouldn't be here to argue about it, as
this planet wouldn't have been seeded. But why so soon after it became
possible? Why not a couple billion years later? Peter might argue that
it takes around 4 billion years for intelligence to evolve. But in that
case why aren't we having this argument a few billion years from now
instead of now? That seems like probabilistic evidence against panspermia.

[Paul J Gans]

pnyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Dec 7, 10:02?pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
>> pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> >The very person who last essentially asked B4 also made a huge deal
>> >about planetary orbits being "chaotic" [in a very precise technical
>> >sense] and how *he* thought a space probe could be expected to miss
>> >its target planet after a mere few thousand years en route from
>> >launch.
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> As the person referred to above, I must object.

>FYI, Paul, "I object" does not simply mean, "I wish to take the
>floor." [Have you been watching too many courtroom dramas?] :-)

I object means that I take exception to what you wrote.

>> The background
>> includes your claim that the panspermists scouted out likely
>> solar systems using ships that might take tens of thousands
>> of years to complete their voyage.

>...as an upper bound. "A few thousand years" is compatible with
>that.

>"few" is a relative term. I had Crick and Orgel's talking in terms of
>10^8 years at the back of my mind.

Yeah. A few thousands is compatible with 10^8. And pigs can fly.

By the way I have no idea why you feel it safe to rely on Crick
and Orgel. Crick was trained mainly in biology and Orgel mainly
in chemistry. I do not conceded that that makes them specialists
in interstellar travel. Nor should you.

>> That would then be followed by seed ships taking about as long
>> to reach the designated systems.

>Yup.

>> Now I'm glad to see that we finally agree that n-body orbits
>> about a central mass with n > 1 are chaotic.

>You mean it took you this long to realize what the very precise
>technical meaning of "chaotic" is? I told you already MONTHS ago that
>the 3-body problem is chaotic except in special cases. This was while
>you were still parasitizing the everyday connotations of "chaotic" and
>never explaining what you meant by the word.

Peter, you just blew smoke and claimed that chaos was a technical
term used only by pure mathematicians -- which only went to show that
you were unaware of the last 30 years of development of chaos
theory by applied folks.

>And you still haven't got it quite right. If there are only two
>bodies and the central mass, and one of those two bodies is
>considerably more massive than the other, and there are no other
>influences, the two Trojan points lead to stable orbits for all
>concerned.

Yes, and the other three are metastable. Pigs fly. I am writing
for a general audience, not for specialists. It is actually
quite funny for you to expect publication grade specificity
from me while you yourself refuse to give details.

>> ?Just how long
>> the period of stability might last depends on ?the initial

>> conditions of all the major (and minor) objects orbit the
>> system.

>What period of stability?

That was a "term of art" I used instead of having to discuss
Lyapunov exponents in posts that are already so long that
almost nobody reads them.

Did you really think I didn't know what I'm talking about?

>> Early in the solar system's history the orbits were quite
>> chaotic.

>Sure, but you have yet to quantify "very chaotic"--not that it
>matters.

Then why bring it up?



>> That much is KNOWN. ?Thus the time of observation

>> for the seeder's ships must have been after this period.

>Yup. If the seeders had started during the very chaotic period, they
>would have bypassed OUR solar system, because conditions on any of the
>planets would have been very bad for life. It was only after the
>intense asteroid bombardment was over that it had any chance to
>flourish.

Exactly, and that does not give them a very large window.

>> The solar system seems to have calmed down after that.
>>
>> This involves the problem that the seeders had to identify
>> our solar system as a plausible seeding candidate even
>> earlier without knowing the stability of the system at all.

>Utter bilge. We would not be here in the first place. See above
>("bypassed").

What do you mean by this? We *are* here, and one likely
explanation is not that the seeders hit the window of
opportunity just right, but can easily be explained by
life starting here.


>> That was the reason why I raised chaos as a problem. ?I

>> had hoped for a reasoned answer from you, but I never got
>> one.

>You got one, but to understand it, you would have to understand the
>*spirit* of the Anthropic Principle as well as the letter of the
>definitions.

Peter, the "Anthropic Principle" is one of those things that
isn't even wrong. You really must start with the fact that
we *are* here. Using that to claim that the universe must
be fine-tuned for us is nonsense. The best argument against
it is that this universe is NOT fine tuned for us. We can
survive on only a fraction of it that is so small as to be
even round off error for the gods. We can't even thrive on
much of the earth's surface, much less Mars or Venus.

I'd not call that "fine tuning for life".

By the way, your answer to it was to call my statement "nonsense".
I pointed out at the time that such arguments would not
convince anyone.

>I tried all kinds of ways of explaining it to you, but you are color-
>blind and tone-deaf to the concept.

Don't bother. It is a cart-before-the-horse argument and demonstrably
false as well.

>Concluded in next reply.

Why? Do you think that I am going to remember all that has gone
on before? This is not the only newsgroup I read and this is
not the only thread that I'm involved in?

And by the way, you have NEVER explained why you think the chance
of abiogenesis here on earth is so small. You claim that evolution
could not have produced viable life forms in the time available,
but that is just speculation on your part.

I keep pointing out that the physics of pansperming the galaxy
are very daunting as well, but you are happy to hand-wave
the difficulties away.

[Paul J Gans]

pnyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Dec 7, 10:02?pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
>> pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

Repetitious material cut.

>> My next step, never taken due to lack of response, was
>> that we know that the earth formed about 4.5 billion years
>> ago. There seems already to have been life on earth about
>> 3.5 billion years ago. Some sources claim that photosynthesis
>> already existed by then. Thus the seeding window less than
>> 1 billion years. In fact it was much shorter since the
>> early crust was in "turmoil" due to impact heating, heat
>> stemming from the core, and outgassing.

>I think we DID go through all this elementary exercise.

WE did not. You may have done it with someone else, but
sadly I cannot and do not read all of your gargantuan
posts.

>> So it seems that the seeders got lucky and reached the
>> earth during the very short window of opportunity of
>> much less than 1 billion years.

>You got it backwards--almost. WE are lucky that the panspermists did
>their project after things had calmed down. We wouldn't exist
>otherwise, if my hypothesis of the rarity of abiogenesis, and the
>rarity of intelligent life coming into existence even after
>abiogenesis, is correct.

Come on, that's kindergarden logic. You are assuming the result.

>I say "after things had calmed down" because if my hypothesis is
>correct, the panspermists could have started their project as much as
>5 billion years afterwards--not more, because the sun would make
>things too hot for the earth, and then they would have to shift to
>Mars, or even further out. It's just that WE would not be here.

We certainly would be here. The odds are that we did, in
fact, get created here and evolved here.

See, I can match you bald statement for bald statement. None
of what you write here is evidence for anything.

>> There are many other objections as well, but absent any
>> meaningful discussion of what is a chemical and physical
>> problem, there's no point in bringing them up.

>The "problem" may stem from the fact that you are much closer to
>Maritnez's way of thinking than mine. Your getting things backwards
>may have been due to something like this at the back of your mind:

I have never really read Martinez and I do not have things backward.

> Kismet [= fate -- you're an atheist, aren't you?]
> decreed that human beings would exist on earth.
> Thus the panspermists were very lucky that they
> were the means whereby Kismet's decree
> was realized.

Come on. I've flunked folks on PhD exams who argued that
way. And you flunk too.

You have to explain (1) exactly why you consider abiogenesis
here on earth to be so improbable. Arguing from personal
disbelief that biochemistry could have evolved this structure
or that structure earns you minus points.

And then IF we accept your argument you have to show that
panspermy is practical. I know for a fact that you can not
show this. All you can do is argue that as yet unknown
advances in physics and engineering will let it be done.

I will then respond that as yet unknown advances in biochemistry
and biophysics (and numbers of other fields) will show that
life very likely began here and is most likely not uncommon
around the galaxy at all.

Do you see what your problem is? You are taking a hypothetical
and trying to make it real for your own personal reasons.

[Mark Isaak]

This apparent pessimism comes from my study of ecology. It is typical
for populations to go through periods of boom and bust. Not
infrequently, the bust results in the extinction of the population.
Fortunately, most species consist of more than one population, and they
do not all go extinct at the same time, and the ones that don't are able
to recolonize the homelands of the ones that do.

Humans are doing two things to greatly exacerbate our population
dynamics. First, we are modifying our environment on a global scale and
in a big way -- not a good thing for long-term population stability.
Second, we are globalizing, so we may be considered to have only one
population. No humans to come back and resettle after the sulfur has
cleared.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most
pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems." - D. Hume

[Paul J Gans]

All of which brings us full circle to the fact that we are
arguing about hypotheticals. Once one states that perhaps
life did not begin here but in fact came here in steerage
from the old planet, you have basically exhausted the
intellectual content of the notion.

[Paul J Gans]

Yes! I thought that one of the most clever inventions
in Science Fiction.

[Paul J Gans]

Mitchell Coffey <mitchel...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Dec 10, 3:33?pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> On Dec 9, 1:20 am, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > Mitchell Coffey <mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > On 12/7/2012 6:10 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>> > > > On Dec 7, 2:41 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
>> > > [snip]
>> > > >> No generation in
>> > > >> history has been able to bear the cost of directed panspermia,
>>
>> > > > On the contrary, the Apollo program was only a few times less costly
>> > > > on a yearly basis than a directed panspermia program would be, and was
>> > > > dwarfed by our military spending.
>>
>> > > Do you have the numbers on this?
>>
>> > Back in the 70s I heard that the entire US space program to that date
>> > cost less than a single day's bombing of Hanoi at the height of the war.
>>
>> > I have no idea how that compares with a directed panspermia program. I
>> > suspect that would cost more than the entire global output for many
>> > years.
>>
>> You seem to be thinking of a crash program in our state of

>> technology. ?But as I've said elsewhere, I expect the *beginning* of

>> the project to be the culmination of perhaps a thousand years of
>> preliminary exploration, at the end of which a lot of technology would
>> already be in place.
>>
>> And so I am sticking by my original estimate: only a few times greater
>> than the Apollo project, on a year by year basis.
>>
>> Peter Nyikos

>Again, could you show your numbers?

I suspect he belongs to the Paul Ryan school of numerology.

[jillery]

IIUC the argument you describe abive is similar to the one Paul Gans
also described earlier. Your argument challenges the validity of
Directed Panspermia generally. My argument challenges the baseless
assumption of extremely rare (once per galaxy) homegrown abiogenesis.

I'm disappointed you didn't think enough of the rest of my post to
even mark your deletion of it.

[John Harshman]

I'm pretty sure stage trees wouldn't work as advertised. Could they even
get to solar escape velocity? And if they did, how do they navigate to a
nice spot? And how many thousands of years will that payload endure the
radiation? Like many of Niven's ideas, it sounds nice until you think
about it. Works fine for its original purpose, though, farmed rocket
boosters.

[John Harshman]

On 12/10/12 5:30 PM, jillery wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:31:09 -0800, John Harshman
> <jhar...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>> On 12/10/12 3:42 PM, jillery wrote:
>>
>>> OTOH the fact that life started on
>>> Earth almost as soon as it could have, is good evidence that homegrown
>>> abiogenesis is very likely.
>>
>> I believe there actually is an argument here related to and in addition
>> to the one you present (which Peter consistently rejects). How likely
>> are the hypothetical panspermists to have been active at exactly the
>> point at which earth first becomes amenable to life? If they'd been
>> active earlier, then of course we wouldn't be here to argue about it, as
>> this planet wouldn't have been seeded. But why so soon after it became
>> possible? Why not a couple billion years later? Peter might argue that
>> it takes around 4 billion years for intelligence to evolve. But in that
>> case why aren't we having this argument a few billion years from now
>> instead of now? That seems like probabilistic evidence against panspermia.
>
>
> IIUC the argument you describe abive is similar to the one Paul Gans
> also described earlier.

That may be true.

> Your argument challenges the validity of
> Directed Panspermia generally. My argument challenges the baseless
> assumption of extremely rare (once per galaxy) homegrown abiogenesis.
>
> I'm disappointed you didn't think enough of the rest of my post to
> even mark your deletion of it.
>

No reflection on you. That's just what was relevant to the point I
wanted to make.

[Mitchell Coffey]

The SF story I'd like to see has DP projects sending seeding probes to
every planet in the whole galaxy. Through some miscalculation they
failed to take anywhere they landed, and on any planet where life
already existed, wiped it out.

Mitchell Coffey

[Mitchell Coffey]

Excuse me Peter, but you're the master of injecting your own subjects
into the middle of threads.

> I think you need to cut back a bit on your political partisanship.

Says the fellow who would inject abortion into every post if allowed.

> You also did it [in the broad sense of political partisanship] where I
> was concerned, in a thread involving prawnster.

[snip]

Regarding Prawster, I would hope for the day when disgust at his racism,
misogyny and homophobia was not considered "political."

Now, if you'll excuse me, Jillery and I were having a conversation.

Mitchell Coffey

[pnyikos]

On Dec 10, 10:31 pm, Mitchell Coffey <mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com>

wrote:
> On 12/10/2012 3:49 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Dec 9, 1:12 pm, Mitchell Coffey <mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >> On 12/9/2012 2:42 AM, jillery wrote:
>
> >>> On Sun, 9 Dec 2012 17:20:59 +1100, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S.
> >>> Wilkins) wrote:
>
> >>>> Mitchell Coffey <mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>>>> On 12/7/2012 6:10 PM, pnyikos wrote:
> >>>>>> On Dec 7, 2:41 am, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:
> >>>>> [snip]
> >>>>>>>     No generation in
> >>>>>>> history has been able to bear the cost of directed panspermia,
>
> >>>>>> On the contrary, the Apollo program was only a few times less costly
> >>>>>> on a yearly basis than a directed panspermia program would be, and was
> >>>>>> dwarfed by our military spending.
>
> >>>>> Do you have the numbers on this?
>
> >>>> Back in the 70s I heard that the entire US space program to that date
> >>>> cost less than a single day's bombing of Hanoi at the height of the war.

I think that was a wild exaggeration, by the way. It would put the
cost of a single day's bombing of Hanoi into the billions. Now, if
Wilkins had said "50's" or his source would have been right. Maybe
even "early 60's".

> >>>> I have no idea how that compares with a directed panspermia program. I
> >>>> suspect that would cost more than the entire global output for many
> >>>> years.
>
> >>> Or, if some right-wing pundits are to be believed, the Obama debt.
>
> > Right wing pundits have nothing to do with it.  I think the yearly
> > cost of a directed panspermia project would be many times  less than
> > the amount by which Obama has added to the national debt each year.
>
> >> I know you don't agree with said pundits, but it's such a part of the
> >> conventional wisdom, and I haven't recovered from the election, that I
> >> have to comment:
>
> >> Yes, if one counts Obama as responsible for the recession, and for Bush
> >> wars, spending programs and tax cuts, and for policies Obama wants to
> >> change but the Republicans won't let him. And if one discounts the fact
> >> that the Federal deficit has gone down under Obama.
>
> > You and jillery seem to have a weakness for completely losing sight of
> > what the discussion was all about.
>
> Excuse me Peter, but you're the master of injecting your own subjects
> into the middle of threads.

But not in such a way as to make it look like I am addressing
something that a person said immediately before. You won't catch me
starting a sentence with "Or" when there is no logical connection with
what the person I'm responding to said.

> > I think you need to cut back a bit on your political partisanship.
>
> Says the fellow who would inject abortion into every post if allowed.

You sure have some screwed-up ideas about me.

> > You also did it [in the broad sense of political partisanship] where I
> > was concerned, in a thread involving prawnster.
>
> [snip]
>
> Regarding Prawster, I would hope for the day when disgust at his racism,
> misogyny and homophobia was not considered "political."

That's not what I was referring to at all. I was speaking VERY
broadly, like, talk.origins is what Aristotle called a "polis" [hence
the word "political"], and there are these parties, the party of
creationists, the party of directed panspermists [one member so far],
etc.

You'll get a better idea of what I mean when I reply to your post over
there [tomorrow, I hope].

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 10, 7:31 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> On 12/10/12 3:42 PM, jillery wrote:
>
> > OTOH the fact that life started on
> > Earth almost as soon as it could have, is good evidence that homegrown
> > abiogenesis is very likely.

On the contrary, the fact that it got started in a tiny window of
time, when no one has the foggiest idea of how it could have been
*likely* to get as far as the first prokaryote in even 4 billion
years, was the one reason Howard Hershey took my DP hypothesis
seriously in the 1990's.

I wonder why he hasn't shown up on this thread yet. Back when I
resumed posting here, two years ago almost to the day, he had lots to
say about DP.

> I believe there actually is an argument here related to and in addition
> to the one you present (which Peter consistently rejects). How likely
> are the hypothetical panspermists to have been active at exactly the
> point at which earth first becomes amenable to life?

They are likely to be active at a time when there are lots of planets
amenable to life. That's because there were lots of such sites back
then, probably several times more than now. Earth just happened to be
one that had formed a little while before, comparatively speaking. My
hypothesis is that it was one of the youngest--the others could have
been as old as the planet of the panspermists, or even a few billion
years older.

> If they'd been
> active earlier, then of course we wouldn't be here to argue about it, as
> this planet wouldn't have been seeded.

Stick with that insight, John. You are much closer to understanding
the fallacy behind "lucky panspermists, to be able to seed earth" than
the others who have weighed in on this theme.

Minor nitpick: when you say "earlier", as much as half a billion
years earlier, might be OK. A hundred million is just fine.

> But why so soon after it became
> possible? Why not a couple billion years later? Peter might argue that
> it takes around 4 billion years for intelligence to evolve.

Or maybe as little as 2 billion, if there are much fewer dissolved
minerals to oxidize in the ocean before the accumulation of
atmospheric oxygen can begin in earnest. Remember how I've posted
from time to time about this? [keywords: banded iron formations]

> But in that
> case why aren't we having this argument a few billion years from now
> instead of now? That seems like probabilistic evidence against panspermia.

That's one way of looking at it. The other way is the way I said
above. We are out in the second or third standard deviation, age-
wise, of all the planets I hypothesize to have been seeded.

The principle of mediocrity can't apply everywhere--obviously, the
more factors to which you apply it, the less likely that you will be
right in every case.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 10, 7:46 pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
> pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >On Dec 7, 10:02?pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
> >> pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >> [snip]
>
> >> >The very person who last essentially asked B4 also made a huge deal
> >> >about planetary orbits being "chaotic" [in a very precise technical
> >> >sense] and how *he* thought a space probe could be expected to miss
> >> >its target planet after a mere few thousand years en route from
> >> >launch.
>
> >> [snip]
>
> >> As the person referred to above, I must object.
> >FYI, Paul, "I object" does not simply mean, "I wish to take the
> >floor."  [Have you been watching too many courtroom dramas?]    :-)
>
> I object means that I take exception to what you wrote.

You have yet to identify a single thing to which you are taking
exception in the lead paragraph.

> >> The background
> >> includes your claim that the panspermists scouted out likely
> >> solar systems using ships that might take tens of thousands
> >> of years to complete their voyage.
> >...as an upper bound.  "A few thousand years" is compatible with
> >that.
> >"few" is a relative term.  I had Crick and Orgel's talking in terms of
> >10^8 years at the back of my mind.
>
> Yeah.  A few thousands is compatible with 10^8.  And pigs can fly.

You need to re-read your "ten thousand", which I was comparing to my
"few thousand," and not get so mesmerised by your own expertness at
dadaistic repartee.

Readers note, the 10^8 was nowhere to be seen in the paragraph to
which Gans were supposedly objecting, and so he's torpedoed the most
likely feature he could have identified as taking objection to.

Remainder deleted, to be replied to when it is almost time to hit the
sack.

Good night, all.

Peter Nyikos