The Protein Takeover. PN's scenario
el cid
Peter Nyikos has pronounced his claim that the rise of
protein translation from the genetic code is such a
problem in postulating earthly abiogenesis that it is
wiser to postulate that life was seeded here from an
external source. He has declared an estimate of one
google years for natural processes to produce our current
biochemistry in an unaided naturalistic manner. This is
the same number he used approximately 15 years ago
making a similar claim.
Clearly nobody knows exactly what did happen, and
most likely we never will. I will address what could
happen, what might have happened, and what evidence
we have for what did happen with support for some
scenarios. But before doing so, some questions should
be answer of Peter.
They are simple questions he should be able to
answer quickly.
He has given us a number so he must have an idea of
how it would happen. What is that process? If you
have no idea of the process, you can't guess at
how long it would take.
His number hasn't changed. Does this mean all the
scientific results we have from the last 15 years
don't change anything in his proposed process?
These answers matter to me to know if it is worth
the effort of providing an alternative view. If there's
really no more to it than some vague impression
derived from reading a few whimsical books by
Crick and De Duve, I don't think it will be worth the
effort. I'm willing to put up something tangible against
something tangible but not against shifting mists.
Paul J Gans
It is not possible to compute the odds of something
happening after the fact when one has no real knowlege
of the mechanics of the process. Thus there have to
be assumptions involved. Those assumptions are the weak
point.
Example: I just rolled a single die and got a six. What
are the odds of that happening.
Without thought one might respond 1 in 6. However, that assumes
a fair die. There is no evidence to that effect. The die could
easily be biased.
Our friend knows this. He is a mathematician. Draw your
own conclusion. One google years indeed.
--
--- Paul J. Gans
Baron Bodissey
I'm still trying to wrap my head around how seeding by aliens solves
the problem of the origin of life. It just moves the problem to
another world. How is that useful?
Baron Bodissey
... listen:there's a hell
of a good universe next door;let's go
– e. e. cummings
Steven L.
"Paul J Gans" <gan...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:ie14qv$bud$1...@reader1.panix.com:
Yep.
It's one reason why the estimates of the probabilities of catastrophic
failures of systems like the space shuttle or an electrical power grid
or a nuclear reactor have so often proven to be underestimates. We can
only compute the probabilities of the failure modes (sequences of steps
leading to failures) that we know about and care enough to investigate.
You can't just take a complex system like a spaceship or an industrial
plant, and without thoroughly analyzing its operation say "Oh sure, it's
99.9% reliable" or somesuch.
-- Steven L.
Ernest Major
<29b084e9-7d3b-47d8...@s5g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
Baron Bodissey <mct...@yahoo.com> writes
The argument is that life X can form spontaneously, but life Y can't.
The existence of life X is then explained by it being engineered by an
instance of life Y.
This is directed abiogenesis. I presume that the reason for adding
directed panspermia into the mix is an assumption that life X can't
develop to the point of having sufficient engineering capability in the
time span available.
>
>Baron Bodissey
>... listen:there's a hell
>of a good universe next door;let's go
> – e. e. cummings
>
--
alias Ernest Major
Ernest Major
<{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> writes
Let me try again.
The argument is that life X can form spontaneously, but life Y can't.
The existence of life Y is then explained by it being engineered by an
instance of life X.
>
>This is directed abiogenesis. I presume that the reason for adding
>directed panspermia into the mix is an assumption that life X can't
>develop to the point of having sufficient engineering capability in the
>time span available.
--
alias Ernest Major
richardal...@gmail.com
Simple.
Time machines.
RF
Burkhard
Three possible answers:
- Life on that other world is more simple than ours
- Life had more time to arise on that other planet (e.g. planet is
older)
- combination of the above two
hersheyh
>
> Peter Nyikos has pronounced his claim that the rise of
> protein translation from the genetic code is such a
> problem in postulating earthly abiogenesis that it is
> wiser to postulate that life was seeded here from an
> external source. He has declared an estimate of one
> google years for natural processes to produce our current
> biochemistry in an unaided naturalistic manner. This is
> the same number he used approximately 15 years ago
> making a similar claim.
If our chemistry (based on carbon as it is) cannot produce our form of
biochemistry in a google years, what sort of chemistry would? Or,
more interestingly, how does one determine an estimate of a google of
years. And if no chemistry can produce x, then perhaps he is indeed
going to invoke transfer to our universe from older universes.
> Clearly nobody knows exactly what did happen, and
> most likely we never will. I will address what could
> happen, what might have happened, and what evidence
> we have for what did happen with support for some
> scenarios. But before doing so, some questions should
> be answer of Peter.
>
> They are simple questions he should be able to
> answer quickly.
>
> He has given us a number so he must have an idea of
> how it would happen. What is that process? If you
> have no idea of the process, you can't guess at
> how long it would take.
>
> His number hasn't changed. Does this mean all the
> scientific results we have from the last 15 years
> don't change anything in his proposed process?
No. It might mean that his number was not derived in open sunshine,
but came from some dark nether orifice where the sun don't shine.
Baron Bodissey
> In message <F4H1FME$sIBNF...@meden.invalid>, Ernest Major
> <{$t...@meden.demon.co.uk> writes
>
>
>
> >In message
> ><29b084e9-7d3b-47d8-8269-c6286abaf...@s5g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
> >Baron Bodissey <mct5...@yahoo.com> writes
Yes, well... I love science fiction as much as anybody but I'm always
cognizant that it is science FICTION.
Baron Bodissey
When science is on the march, nothing stands in its way.
– Amazon Women on the Moon
Paul J Gans
>Three possible answers:
I would like to see an argument that "simple" life can effect
technological marvels.
Greg G.
We don't even know that it was a six-sided die, either. When
calculating hit points in D&D during my younger days used a 20-sided
die.
>
> Our friend knows this. He is a mathematician. Draw your
> own conclusion. One google years indeed.
>
> --
> --- Paul J. Gans- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Burkhard
_must_ have a DNA of at least the complexity we observe on earthy -
that it would have been impossible for nature to come up with
something even marginally less complex, given the right environmental
conditions? Might be right, but I can't see any good reasons for it
either
el cid
There appear to be two specific speculations in play.
One speculation that was described in a response to JH
had essentially similar biochemistry to our evolving on
some other planet and then some apparent genetic engineering
took place to create seed life forms that would be able
to colonize other planets and presumably quickly develop
into life forms capable of some goal, perhaps to play chess
or to be tasty.
A different speculation is that they remained RNA based
or at least lacked our "highly improbable" biochemistry
based on the Central Dogma DNA -> RNA -> Protein
using the elegant genetic code earthly life possesses.
There isn't a very good excuse for his critics to fail to see
these two as part of his panspermia scheme(s). Not that
people need to hang on his every post but if you are going
to pile on the guy, you probably should pay attention to
what he says.
What I started this thread for, is to ask for some more
details about why the second scenario is being proposed.
PN has claimed that evolving a protein translation
mechanism that is functionally equivalent to our is
so far fetched that it would required a google years
to occur via undirected natural evolution of abiotic
precursors. Undoubtedly, I'm somehow subtly misstating
that but again, that's why I'm asking for some clear and
crisp exposition by PN. I'm not asking for more bombast
about how he's asked for other people to give him a
scenario and who failed to convince him. That's a broken
record and just escalates the general acrimony.
Letting him explain himself in the absence of a swarm
of darts would mean some would miss out on the
entertainment they come to talk.origins for. Still, if
anyone else is mildly curious, perhaps they can hold
back on some of the editorial projections. I don't
mean anyone in particular but there is a swarm effect.
If needed, people can instead attack me for being
delusional in the face of history.
jillery
If you want to play Good Cop that is your choice. I allow that it may
bear fruit. OTOH my first post to him stiputated directed panspermia,
and all I gotin reply was sour grapes.
Ernest Major
<c0598408-8746-4ba8...@y3g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>,
Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> writes
complexity, but in the case of RNA-life, I suspect that replication
fidelity isn't up to supporting a genome large enough to support the
necessary structural complexity.
--
alias Ernest Major
Paul J Gans
Exactly.
He's presented this here before. It was shot down before as well.
Paul J Gans
No, that's not my argument. My argument is one of "neuronal
complexity". A single neuron can't do much on its own.
Or if one doesn't like neurons, put it in computer terminology.
A modern CPU runs something like three quarters of a BILLION
transitors. And we've not accounted for any of the peripherals.
So yes, one can imagine a billion Xordaxians huddled together
in a giant interconnected brain, but how does that brain figure
out how to build a space ship and get a payload of whatever they
somehow designed and built as our local life form to the Earth.
Or put another way, can a single four-core i5 Intel chip figure
out relativity all on its own?
I think that there are serious problems with this scenario. I
find the chemistry involved in abiogenesis to be much more
tractable.
Paul J Gans
He's said it here before. And it was shot down before.
>What I started this thread for, is to ask for some more
>details about why the second scenario is being proposed.
>PN has claimed that evolving a protein translation
>mechanism that is functionally equivalent to our is
>so far fetched that it would required a google years
>to occur via undirected natural evolution of abiotic
>precursors. Undoubtedly, I'm somehow subtly misstating
>that but again, that's why I'm asking for some clear and
>crisp exposition by PN. I'm not asking for more bombast
>about how he's asked for other people to give him a
>scenario and who failed to convince him. That's a broken
>record and just escalates the general acrimony.
>Letting him explain himself in the absence of a swarm
>of darts would mean some would miss out on the
>entertainment they come to talk.origins for. Still, if
>anyone else is mildly curious, perhaps they can hold
>back on some of the editorial projections. I don't
>mean anyone in particular but there is a swarm effect.
>If needed, people can instead attack me for being
>delusional in the face of history.
No. Nobody is attacking anybody. All I was pointing
out was that the estimate of a Google of years being
needed is pure speculation. What little evidence we
have is that life began very early in the history of the
Earth and so is likely not that improbable.
Another point is that we humans are closer to being able
to produce artificial life than we are to being able
to find and identify a possible world suitable for our
"life" and then engineer and build such a space craft with
the hugely difficult issues invoved.
That's not guesswork. We are actively looking for such
planets and have not found one "earthlike" yet. And we've
not yet totally mastered the ability to place a payload safely
on a local planet, much less one astronomically far away.
If you wish I'll be glad to remove myself from this discussion
for a while.
hersheyh
Moreover, any explanation should include the following evidence which
was not available in Peter's 1990 Biochemistry text.
Separation of the two functions of tRNA
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080812135517.htm
The natural evolution of a new tRNA to add selenocysteine
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100812171939.htm
The natural evolution of adding pyrrolysine
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090127112043.htm
Note: the more usual way of generating new amino acids is post-
translational modification. But the above two examples show that that
is not the only way that nature produces a work-around. It also opens
up the possibility of artificially modifying the genetic code to
generate proteins with more than the usual 20 aa's.
Specifically, of course, it is Peter's unwarranted assumption that
early protein synthesis had to involve the same degree of specificity
as seen in the modern canonical genetic code organisms that is his
problem. Early proteins, although certainly accidentally
enzymatically useful, probably played more structural roles that did
not require high specificity.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090829091049.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090829091049.htm
For a more recent and fuller description with lots of real scientific
references (the full text is free and not behind a paywall).
http://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/early/2010/07/06/cshperspect.a003681.full.pdf+html
and also
http://www.bioinf.uni-leipzig.de/~studla/Publications/PREPRINTS/02-08-034.pdf
The idea that the genetic code *evolved* is also supported by the
tolerance of the code to point mutations, not just wrt its degeneracy,
but also because point mutations often result in substitution by an aa
with hydrophilic or hydrophobic similarity.
el cid
>
> The natural evolution of a new tRNA to add selenocysteinehttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100812171939.htm
>
> The natural evolution of adding pyrrolysinehttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090127112043.htm
>
> Note: the more usual way of generating new amino acids is post-
> translational modification. But the above two examples show that that
> is not the only way that nature produces a work-around. It also opens
> up the possibility of artificially modifying the genetic code to
> generate proteins with more than the usual 20 aa's.
>
> Specifically, of course, it is Peter's unwarranted assumption that
> early protein synthesis had to involve the same degree of specificity
> as seen in the modern canonical genetic code organisms that is his
> problem. Early proteins, although certainly accidentally
> enzymatically useful, probably played more structural roles that did
>
> For a more recent and fuller description with lots of real scientific
> and alsohttp://www.bioinf.uni-leipzig.de/~studla/Publications/PREPRINTS/02-08...
>
> The idea that the genetic code *evolved* is also supported by the
> tolerance of the code to point mutations, not just wrt its degeneracy,
> but also because point mutations often result in substitution by an aa
> with hydrophilic or hydrophobic similarity.
Indeed and I've got more.
If Peter provides his scenario, the one from which he estimates
a google years, we can cite all sorts of science that is useful
to gage the actual challenges in the steps toward evolution
of polypeptide synthesis via the genetic code.
I'm trying to work toward that because, well because that's the
way a scientist would try to break it down.
If he doesn't have a model, then his claim is ungrounded and
unfounded. He has made claims and I'd like to see them supported
with more than counting pages in books that failed to satisfy him.
He made the claim. He should be able to defend it before reading
any new results. There are many new results that shine light
on the evolution of protein synthesis and the genetic code. Peter
claims this is one of the most significant problems so clearly
he has thought about it. He should share the details that let
him generate an estimate of how it could happen.
pnyikos
>
> Peter Nyikos has pronounced his claim that the rise of
> protein translation from the genetic code is such a
> problem in postulating earthly abiogenesis that it is
> wiser to postulate that life was seeded here from an
> external source.
Yes. Here is my reasoning for that, which you've already seen--in
fact I'll quote some of your words first
--------------------- begin excerpt from earlier reply to you
> You are expressing an opinion that the evolution of protein
> translation is so very problematic that it is a better bet to
> propose life originated elsewhere, developed high technology,
> and chose to seed other solar systems. Your foundation for
> this opinion
...is that in all the years I have challenged people on this, no one
has ever suggested a scenario that would account for it. Nor has Behe
encountered anyone who did, and he's been at this nonstop for almost a
decade and a half.
All the hard evidence I have seen is compatible with the assertion
that "intelligent life as we know it" can only be expected to arise
once in a google of universes the same size as the observable
universe, with all the physical laws and fundamental constants exactly
what they are in ours.
Given that, what is more likely: that we are that one lucky life form,
or that some lucky life form beat us to it and is responsible for our
being here? I postulate that any intelligent technologically advanced
species, realizing that they are alone in the known universe, would
seed a million or more worlds, and if so the odds would seem to favor
the latter answer.
Of course, you won't go along with any of this. So let's see how you
respond to the challenge with some scenarios.
=================== end of excerpt from
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/466eed4e91e7e6ee
> He has declared an estimate of one
> google years for natural processes to produce our current
> biochemistry in an unaided naturalistic manner.
Incorrect. See excerpt above for what I actually wrote.
"googol of universes" is just a convenient way to word the challenge.
I think I'd have the same dismal lack of scenarios if I wrote
"googolplex" in place of "googol," but "googol" is more than enough
for the points I am trying to get across.
> Clearly nobody knows exactly what did happen, and
> most likely we never will. I will address what could
> happen, what might have happened, and what evidence
> we have for what did happen with support for some
> scenarios.
I'm really looking forward to them.
> But before doing so, some questions should
> be answer of Peter.
>
> They are simple questions he should be able to
> answer quickly.
>
> He has given us a number so he must have an idea of
> how it would happen. What is that process? If you
> have no idea of the process, you can't guess at
> how long it would take.
Nor do I try to. See above.
> His number hasn't changed.
I believe I have used "googolplex" (10^googol) several times in the
past.
> Does this mean all the
> scientific results we have from the last 15 years
> don't change anything in his proposed process?
Bootless question, see above.
> These answers matter to me to know if it is worth
> the effort of providing an alternative view. If there's
> really no more to it than some vague impression
> derived from reading a few whimsical books by
> Crick and De Duve,
Not a vague impression. A very clear impression that no one has a
clue as to how it could have occurred in the time frame of our
universe.
By the way, I've read a good bit of DeDuve's book _Blueprint for a
Cell_ during my 7+ year posting break from Usenet. He tries
heroically to come up with scenarios, but my overall impression is
that my characterization of various talk.origins "scenarios" applies
to him too:
Proto-tRNA came first, What's on second and I Don't Know
is on third base.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> I'm still trying to wrap my head around how seeding by aliens solves
> the problem of the origin of life. It just moves the problem to
> another world. How is that useful?
It may be the way it actually happened.
I'm not trying to figure out the origins of all life in our universe,
only the one on our planet.
Peter Nyikos
hersheyh
>
> > For a more recent and fuller description with lots of real scientific
> > references (the full text is free and not behind a paywall).http://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/early/2010/07/06/cshperspect...
> > and alsohttp://www.bioinf.uni-leipzig.de/~studla/Publications/PREPRINTS/02-08...
>
> > The idea that the genetic code *evolved* is also supported by the
> > tolerance of the code to point mutations, not just wrt its degeneracy,
> > but also because point mutations often result in substitution by an aa
> > with hydrophilic or hydrophobic similarity.
>
> Indeed and I've got more.
>
> If Peter provides his scenario, the one from which he estimates
> a google years, we can cite all sorts of science that is useful
> to gage the actual challenges in the steps toward evolution
> of polypeptide synthesis via the genetic code.
>
> I'm trying to work toward that because, well because that's the
> way a scientist would try to break it down.
>
> If he doesn't have a model, then his claim is ungrounded and
> unfounded. He has made claims and I'd like to see them supported
> with more than counting pages in books that failed to satisfy him.
> He made the claim. He should be able to defend it before reading
> any new results. There are many new results that shine light
> on the evolution of protein synthesis and the genetic code. Peter
> claims this is one of the most significant problems so clearly
> he has thought about it. He should share the details that let
> him generate an estimate of how it could happen.
I forgot to repeat the citation of the Woese, et. al. article that you
have already posted. Peter, this is must read material if you hope to
present a reasonable argument that does not represent the "It's too
complex for me. Therefore the Xordaxians (or gods) did it." school of
thought. Even if it is almost a decade old, it's still relevant
today. Doesn't seem to have been too much more recent work.
pnyikos
> "Paul J Gans" <gan...@panix.com> wrote in messagenews:ie14qv$bud$1...@reader1.panix.com:
> > It is not possible to compute the odds of something
> > happening after the fact when one has no real knowlege
> > of the mechanics of the process.
Which is why I don't make them. See my reply to "el cid".
> Yep.
> It's one reason why the estimates of the probabilities of catastrophic
> failures of systems like the space shuttle or an electrical power grid
> or a nuclear reactor have so often proven to be underestimates. We can
> only compute the probabilities of the failure modes (sequences of steps
> leading to failures) that we know about and care enough to investigate.
> You can't just take a complex system like a spaceship or an industrial
> plant, and without thoroughly analyzing its operation say "Oh sure, it's
> 99.9% reliable" or somesuch.
Absolutely. That's why I roll my eyes when I read someone writing on
the Drake Equation and deciding that "1 in 100" is a conservative
estimate and "1 in 1" is a liberal estimate for the most unknown
factor of them all.
This is the factor of whether planets ideally situated for the start
of life, with a prebiotic setup like our earth, will actually develop
life.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> >- Life on that other world is more simple than ours
> >- Life had more time to arise on that other planet (e.g. planet is
> >older)
> >- combination of the above two
>
> I would like to see an argument that "simple" life can effect
> technological marvels.
It depends on what you mean by "simple". The relevant term is "based
on a simpler biochemistry than ours."
> --- Paul J. Gans
Did you suddenly lose interest? It's too far outside what we called
"The Bermuda Triangle" in soc.history.medieval, isn't it?
Peter Nyikos
lucaspa
> The protein takeover from an RNA world
>
> Peter Nyikos has pronounced his claim that the rise of
> protein translation from the genetic code is such a
> problem in postulating earthly abiogenesis that it is
> wiser to postulate that life was seeded here from an
> external source. He has declared an estimate of one
> google years for natural processes to produce our current
> biochemistry in an unaided naturalistic manner. This is
> the same number he used approximately 15 years ago
> making a similar claim.
Why do we have to start with the RNA world? Why not proteins first
and the genetic code evolve later? It's easy to make proteins
abiotically and they will spontaneously form cells. Then the cells
will make nucleic acids. Some references for Peter:
http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html
http://www.siu.edu/~protocell/
1. AM Poole, DC Jeffares, D Penney, The path from the RNA world. J.
Molecular Evolution 46: 1-17, 1998. Describes Darwinian step-by-step
for evolution from RNA molecules to cells with directed protein
synthesis. All intermediate steps are useful.
http://awcmee.massey.ac.nz/people/dpenny/pdf/Poole_et_al_1998.pdf
2. P S Schimmel and R Alexander, All you need is RNA. Science
281:658-659, Jul. 31, 1998. Describes research showing that RNA in
ribosomes sufficient to make proteins. Intermediate step in going from
abiogenesis to genetic code.
pnyikos
And I once posted a "Just so story" to talk.origins in which 12-
fingered Golians had a game where they rolled twelve 12-sided dice
simultaneously.
Getting a 12 on all twelve was called "rolling a little Shazou" and I
gave a bit of information as to how likely that was to happen.
Getting twelve 12's in 12 successive rolls was "rolling a Great
Shazou" and I leave it to y'all how long it takes for that to be
likely to happen.
> Exactly.
>
> He's presented this here before. It was shot down before as well.
Garbage in, garbage out.
> >> Our friend knows this. He is a mathematician. Draw your
> >> own conclusion. One google years indeed.
To do what? Roll a 6 on a biased die?
Try to be a little clearer in your formulations next time.
I know that's a lot to expect from your kind of medieval historian.
Peter Nyikos
el cid
OK, you've reposted something and I still have no idea
how you determine a googol years versus a billion years
or a billion years in a googol universes.
I can only conclude that your number is absolutely, fundamentally,
meaningless.
All you have is that you don't see a path. For some reason,
your incredulity on this topic is very meaningful to you
despite your broad ignorance of biochemistry.
Is there any reason you can give why anybody else should
consider your opinion on the matter to be worth considering?
Last chance. Can you break down your estimate of about
once if a googol universes like ours into bits?
I guess we make small molecules like amino acids and
lipids in most of the universes rather routinely.
Do many of then ever produce RNA polymers?
Do some of them produce chemical hypercycles that
pump up the concentrations of abiotic precursor
molecules?
To self-replicating RNA molecules happen billions
of times in most universes but never get around to
template directed protein synthesis?
If I provide you with good biochemical pathways to
cover some steps, I'd like to know if I can adjust your
number down by a factor of 10 or 10^100
or 1^1,000,000.
pnyikos
> On Dec 13, 12:59 pm, hersheyh <hershe...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Dec 11, 5:02 pm, el cid <elcidbi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > The protein takeover from an RNA world
>
> > > Peter Nyikos has pronounced his claim that the rise of
> > > protein translation from the genetic code is such a
> > > problem in postulating earthly abiogenesis that it is
> > > wiser to postulate that life was seeded here from an
> > > external source. He has declared an estimate of one
> > > google years for natural processes to produce our current
> > > biochemistry in an unaided naturalistic manner.
As readers of my first post to this thread can surmise, I made no such
declaration, nor any declaration remotely along these lines. Not now,
not ever.
[...]
> > Moreover, any explanation should include the following evidence which
> > was not available in Peter's 1990 Biochemistry text.
>
> > Separation of the two functions of tRNAhttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080812135517.htm
>
> > The natural evolution of a new tRNA to add selenocysteinehttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100812171939.htm
>
> > The natural evolution of adding pyrrolysinehttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090127112043.htm
Still in the DeDuve _Vital Dust_ sub-basement, somewhat removed from
the Urey-Miller subbasement but showing little progress towards
climbing the skyscraper with "protein takeover" in its upper stories.
> > Note: the more usual way of generating new amino acids is post-
> > translational modification. But the above two examples show that that
> > is not the only way that nature produces a work-around. It also opens
> > up the possibility of artificially modifying the genetic code to
> > generate proteins with more than the usual 20 aa's.
Kid stuff.
> > Specifically, of course, it is Peter's unwarranted assumption that
> > early protein synthesis had to involve the same degree of specificity
> > as seen in the modern canonical genetic code organisms that is his
> > problem.
Of course, I made no such assumption, and if Hershey had read what I
posted on the other thread, he would know that I postulated the
Scenario 3C panspermists to have structural proteins in their bodies,
doing such work as lining pores in their cells.
But then, maybe he did read it, and maybe he knows it. With Hershey,
you never can tell.
I hypothesize not much in the way of protein-based enzymes, and
certainly no genetically based aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, in Scenario
3C. IOW, any molecules of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase would arise by
accident, with no real chance of being the basis for a protein
takeover.
> >Early proteins, although certainly accidentally
> > enzymatically useful, probably played more structural roles that did
> > not require high specificity.
It's almost as if he were plagiarizing my Scenario 3C, these last
three lines of his.
[...]
> Indeed and I've got more.
>
> If Peter provides his scenario, the one from which he estimates
> a google years, we can cite all sorts of science that is useful
> to gage the actual challenges in the steps toward evolution
> of polypeptide synthesis via the genetic code.
>
> I'm trying to work toward that because, well because that's the
> way a scientist would try to break it down.
Of course. And I am hoping you will do just that
> If he doesn't have a model, then his claim is ungrounded and
> unfounded.
Are you still referring to this wildly inaccurate "once in a googol of
years" bit that I never advanced?
Please stick to what I actually did say, and which I reposted to this
thread with additional comments. [Keywords: challenge, googolplex]
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> In message <F4H1FME$sIBNF...@meden.invalid>, Ernest Major
> Let me try again.
>
> The argument is that life X can form spontaneously, but life Y can't.
> The existence of life Y is then explained by it being engineered by an
> instance of life X.
It isn't an either-or dichotomy. In one scenario, that I call 3A life
X is essentially the same as Life Y, only it arose ca. 4 billion years
earlier. See my first reply to this thread to el cid.
> >This is directed abiogenesis. I presume that the reason for adding
> >directed panspermia into the mix is an assumption that life X can't
> >develop to the point of having sufficient engineering capability in the
> >time span available.
On the contrary, you are confusing the undirected panspermia of
Arrhenius, etc. with the directed panspermia of Crick and Orgel.
Those panspermists were even more technologically advanced than we
are, but we might reach their level in another century or so. I've
posted on this matter on the thread where this discussion got started.
> --
> alias Ernest Major
Say hello to alias Syrtis Major for me. :-)
Peter Nyikos
Christopher Denney
> On Dec 13, 11:23 am, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> > Greg G. <ggw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >On Dec 11, 7:26 pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
> > >> Example: I just rolled a single die and got a six. What
> > >> are the odds of that happening.
>
> > >> Without thought one might respond 1 in 6. However, that assumes
> > >> a fair die. There is no evidence to that effect. The die could
> > >> easily be biased.
> > >We don't even know that it was a six-sided die, either. When
> > >calculating hit points in D&D during my younger days used a 20-sided
> > >die.
>
> And I once posted a "Just so story" to talk.origins in which 12-
> fingered Golians had a game where they rolled twelve 12-sided dice
> simultaneously.
>
> Getting a 12 on all twelve was called "rolling a little Shazou" and I
> gave a bit of information as to how likely that was to happen.
>
Compare that to how long it takes if you get to keep any twelve rolled
on any die, and just re-roll the non-twelves.
pnyikos
I can only conclude that you aren't reading what I wrote carefully.
There's four years of talk.origins experience behind it.
> All you have is that you don't see a path.
Is there any reason why I should believe you have good reasons for
thinking "Mother Earth did it?" if you don't present at least a
hypothetical path?
> For some reason,
> your incredulity on this topic is very meaningful to you
> despite your broad ignorance of biochemistry.
For some reason, I am passionaltely interested in the question of how
life on earth began. Up to reading _Vital Dust_ by Christian deDuve
and seeing how spectacularly he swept the difficulties under the rug,
I was convinced that life in our galazy is a commonplace. Now I'd
like to know whether it is or not.
If you'd prefer to tackle the challenge, "Show that life so easy to
come by that there are at least a million planets in the galaxy
teeming with it" I'd be ecstatic. But I'm willing to settle for once
in a googol of universes like ours.
> Is there any reason you can give why anybody else should
> consider your opinion on the matter to be worth considering?
> Last chance.
If you use your claim of meaninglessness as a cop-out from coming up
with a scenario of your own, I'll just add you to a long line of other
people who ducked every challenge to show the odds are better than my
rather arbitrary "googol" benchmark.
[...]
> If I provide you with good biochemical pathways to
> cover some steps, I'd like to know if I can adjust your
> number down by a factor of 10 or 10^100
> or 1^1,000,000.
The step I am keenly interested in is where there is no translation
mechanism but oodles of RNA-based enzymes, AKA ribozymes. I don't
mind if you start there. We can discuss the earlier steps next year.
In fact, at some point well before Christmas I will be taking a
posting break and only resuming in January. That's why I said "next
year".
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
wrote:
Maxwell's demon, I knew him well. :-)
But where is the demon-analogue in a world where there isn't true self-
replication, such as the protein translation mechanism provides all
living things on earth with?
Viruses may be "living" to some people but they are nowhere on the
road to evolving a translation mechanism for themselves. They
commandeer the mechanism of the host cell, otherwise they can never
reproduce themselves.
Peter Nyikos
John Harshman
> On Dec 11, 5:02 pm, el cid <elcidbi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> The protein takeover from an RNA world
>>
>> Peter Nyikos has pronounced his claim that the rise of
>> protein translation from the genetic code is such a
>> problem in postulating earthly abiogenesis that it is
>> wiser to postulate that life was seeded here from an
>> external source.
>
> Yes. Here is my reasoning for that, which you've already seen--in
> fact I'll quote some of your words first
>
> --------------------- begin excerpt from earlier reply to you
>> You are expressing an opinion that the evolution of protein
>> translation is so very problematic that it is a better bet to
>> propose life originated elsewhere, developed high technology,
>> and chose to seed other solar systems. Your foundation for
>> this opinion
>
> ...is that in all the years I have challenged people on this, no one
> has ever suggested a scenario that would account for it. Nor has Behe
> encountered anyone who did, and he's been at this nonstop for almost a
> decade and a half.
That reasoning is known in the trade as argument from incredulity: I
can't imagine that it could have happened, therefore it didn't happen.
There are plenty of events we can't explain, and for which we have no
detailed scenario, that happened nevertheless. This is not a valid
argument. Not for you, not for Behe.
I will also note that he and you demand scenarios in much more detail
than you are willing or able to supply for your alternatives, whatever
they may be.
> All the hard evidence I have seen is compatible with the assertion
> that "intelligent life as we know it" can only be expected to arise
> once in a google of universes the same size as the observable
> universe, with all the physical laws and fundamental constants exactly
> what they are in ours.
What you mean to say is that we don't know the probability of the origin
of intelligent life. Isn't the hard evidence (what hard evidence?) also
compatible with the assertion that intelligent life arises several times
in every galaxy?
> Given that, what is more likely: that we are that one lucky life form,
> or that some lucky life form beat us to it and is responsible for our
> being here?
Given that, neither seems more likely. If intelligent life is
vanishingly improbable, why is it more likely that it happened once in a
googol (spelling, please) of universes, in this one, in this galaxy, but
not on this planet, than that it happened once, and on this planet? I
really don't see a meaningful distinction, except that the first
scenario also requires the additional event of a galaxy-seeding project,
and so is at least a bit less probable.
> I postulate that any intelligent technologically advanced
> species, realizing that they are alone in the known universe, would
> seed a million or more worlds, and if so the odds would seem to favor
> the latter answer.
That seems a non sequitur to me.
[snip]
> Not a vague impression. A very clear impression that no one has a
> clue as to how it could have occurred in the time frame of our
> universe.
Does anyone have a clue that it couldn't have happened in the time frame
of earth? If you have no basis on which to judge probabilities, how
exactly are you judging those probabilities to be astronomically low?
> By the way, I've read a good bit of DeDuve's book _Blueprint for a
> Cell_ during my 7+ year posting break from Usenet. He tries
> heroically to come up with scenarios, but my overall impression is
> that my characterization of various talk.origins "scenarios" applies
> to him too:
>
> Proto-tRNA came first, What's on second and I Don't Know
> is on third base.
In what way is this an argument against the natural origin of life, on
earth?
el cid
That adds to the discussion how?
What about pathways that specifically modifies the amino
acids of a codon specific subset of AA-tRNAs?
Is that one of the great leaps required of your model
for the protein takeover?
> > > Specifically, of course, it is Peter's unwarranted assumption that
> > > early protein synthesis had to involve the same degree of specificity
> > > as seen in the modern canonical genetic code organisms that is his
> > > problem.
>
> Of course, I made no such assumption, and if Hershey had read what I
> posted on the other thread, he would know that I postulated the
> Scenario 3C panspermists to have structural proteins in their bodies,
> doing such work as lining pores in their cells.
>
> But then, maybe he did read it, and maybe he knows it. With Hershey,
> you never can tell.
You did say something like that, apparently because you think
that structural proteins are easy and enzymes are really really
hard. Such claims are hard to keep in mind because they
don't make much sense. They also come in small bits buried
in posts that spend more time on useless bluster. One really
meaty post would be so much more effective unless you
really having most of your posts being about how people
don't understand what you write in post 6, 13, 24 and 43
(which often isn't any clearer when you repost it).
> I hypothesize not much in the way of protein-based enzymes, and
> certainly no genetically based aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, in Scenario
> 3C. IOW, any molecules of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase would arise by
> accident, with no real chance of being the basis for a protein
> takeover.
>
> > >Early proteins, although certainly accidentally
> > > enzymatically useful, probably played more structural roles that did
> > > not require high specificity.
>
> It's almost as if he were plagiarizing my Scenario 3C, these last
> three lines of his.
Yet the astute reader sees that Howard is saying that
these structural proteins were obvious precursors to
enzymatic functions and people familiar with biochemistry
know that this makes sense. You obviously think they
are relatively useless as precursors to enzymes. So
they really aren't the same, are they?
> [...]
>
> > Indeed and I've got more.
>
> > If Peter provides his scenario, the one from which he estimates
> > a google years, we can cite all sorts of science that is useful
> > to gage the actual challenges in the steps toward evolution
> > of polypeptide synthesis via the genetic code.
>
> > I'm trying to work toward that because, well because that's the
> > way a scientist would try to break it down.
>
> Of course. And I am hoping you will do just that
To what end? There's no indication you will admit to the
significance of any biochemistry because and will likely
claim it doesn't built a skyscraper.
> > If he doesn't have a model, then his claim is ungrounded and
> > unfounded.
>
> Are you still referring to this wildly inaccurate "once in a googol of
> years" bit that I never advanced?
Well in Julie Thomas terms, it is thematically accurate. You
advanced a number describing the unlikihood of naturalistic
origins of gene encoded polypeptide synthesis. Whether
it was a googol years to a googol universes has some
difference in meaning but it isn't relevant to the question of
what model you base the claim on. What is the model
you base the googol universes claim upon?
> Please stick to what I actually did say, and which I reposted to this
> thread with additional comments. [Keywords: challenge, googolplex]
Once is a googol years is distinct from once in a googol
universes but it is still a number and must be based on
a model. Without that model, there are no goal posts.
Metaphors about skyscrapers don't communicate to me.
Precursors of modern protein synthesis speak to me.
Making random polypeptides with ribozymes might be part
of a pathway to modern peptide synthesis. Are they part
of your googol universe pathway? In what fraction of the
googol universes did RNA based chemical processes
develop that could make random polypeptides?
If you say in every universe multiple times over, we can
skip that step in providing you a path. If you say only
in one per million, we can evaluate such a claim. It
will help put your reliability to estimate such things
in context.
It isn't that I think you actually have a model in mind.
I think your guesswork is sad hyperbole, just like it
was last time. I expect everybody else who is bothering
to read this has a similar opinion but it was worthwhile
giving you a chance to show there's more intellectual
honesty behind your claims than it seems from first
appearances.
pnyikos
2011; this means I see his posts but do not leave in anything from
them in the few times I "reply" to them, as I am doing now.
If someone else follows up to him I might comment on some words of
Hershey, as I already have in a reply to el cid, but that is all the
contact I want with him for the nonce.
I take this opportunity to post the three "scenarios" that I've been
talking about.
3A The panspermists were a species with essentially the same
biochemistry as our own. ID component need not be there at all, or
may range from genetic modification of the sort we do, to building of
production of whole organelles, such as flagellae, where none of the
indigenous species had them.
3B The panspermists had a protein translation mechanism, but a much
simpler one than ours and designed a much more elaborate and precise
one for the organisms they sent.
3C The organisms had a radically different biochemistry, probably
with ribozymes as their enzymes, but also with structural proteins not
made to the same exacting specifications as synthetases necessarily
have to have. They developed a lot of proteins using nanotechnology,
partly to enhance their own makeup but more radically to create
completely new life forms with the translation mechanism we now enjoy.
I called the organisms of 3C "Throomians" in 1996-2001, in conscious
modification of the word "Thrymans" used by Poul Anderson in his early
sf novel, _We Claim These Stars_.
I didn't talk about 3B at all in those days, but I talked plenty
about 3A. Someone else coined a word starting with "X" for them back
then, but I think I'll refer to them as "Golians" this time around.
Once a technological civilization arises based on one of these, no
further explanation of how they spread the life around is necessary,
since we have capabilities for directed panspermy ourselves. I
mentioned them in a follow-up to el cid: Project Orion, etc.
Scenarios 3B and 3C require much more in the way of nanotechnology for
producing prokaryotes of the sort that exist on earth, but I don't
think it necessary to speculate on the steps. It is "Mother Earth did
it" that cries out for a path from the primitive level that origin-of-
life experimenters have achieved, to a full protein translation
mechanism such as is present in all "life as we know it."
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> pnyikos wrote:
> > All the hard evidence I have seen is compatible with the assertion
> > that "intelligent life as we know it" can only be expected to arise
> > once in a google of universes the same size as the observable
> > universe, with all the physical laws and fundamental constants exactly
> > what they are in ours.
>
> What you mean to say is that we don't know the probability of the origin
> of intelligent life. Isn't the hard evidence (what hard evidence?) also
> compatible with the assertion that intelligent life arises several times
> in every galaxy?
It may be, but no one has advanced an informed argument to that
effect.
> > Given that, what is more likely: that we are that one lucky life form,
> > or that some lucky life form beat us to it and is responsible for our
> > being here?
>
> Given that, neither seems more likely. If intelligent life is
> vanishingly improbable, why is it more likely that it happened once in a
> googol (spelling, please) of universes, in this one, in this galaxy, but
> not on this planet, than that it happened once, and on this planet?
See below.
> > I postulate that any intelligent technologically advanced
> > species, realizing that they are alone in the known universe, would
> > seed a million or more worlds, and if so the odds would seem to favor
> > the latter answer.
>
> That seems a non sequitur to me.
Why? do you think that the probability of intelligent life (complete
with technology only marginally more advanced than ours) arising from
prokaryotes is so small that it will only happen in less than one in a
million planets?
If you think this last question is also a non sequitur, than I'm
afraid I'll rapidly lose interest in responding to you on this topic,
and hope we can connect better on sci.bio.paleontology.
Peter Nyikos
Robert Camp
[I recognize this post introduces the risk of significant digression.
If it becomes necessary I will start a new thread.]
I'll let the biologists deal with your protein improbability
arguments. It seems to me el cid pretty much has it correct that it's
an expression of incredulity which, for some reason, you find
particularly profound (and strikes me as another "1000aa barrier"
cover for a logical fallacy, look up Sean Pitman for context if you're
interested).
I'd like to inquire about the "Why?" behind your hypothesis. Why do
you think that an "intelligent technologically advanced
species, realizing that they are alone in the known universe" would
seed millions of worlds in such a way as to offer no apparent remedy
for their loneliness? Are you suggesting this species is
extraordinarily long-lived (on the order of millions of years)? Do
they have a telepathic link to their million-years-hence descendants
or are they simply anticipating the loneliness they will experience
far into the future?
I ask because although I accept that you are not a creationist, absent
any persuasive argument as to the motivations for such actions, what
you are proposing is a rather convenient inference that explains
nearly anything (like God) and is therefore useless empirically or
logically. I do see the panspermia hypothesis as slightly more
reasonable than creationism because it posits natural cause. But in
dealing with intelligent behavior you are in the position of having to
ground your speculations in relevant experience. Like SETI, you have
to formulate your hypothesis based upon the only example of
intelligence we know: humans.
So I am forced to ask my questions above because I just don't see the
evidence working in your favor. I don't think we humans, even if we
had the technology, would seed millions of worlds (except perhaps
accidentally, which explanation doesn't serve your hypothesis for
alternate origins any better than the mundane, earthly, stochastic
processes so detested by creationists).
I accept that I may be missing something obvious and would not be
surprised to hear several plausible scenarios. But I do think that
without reasonable and compelling conjecture as to why any world-
seeding species would consider doing such a thing, you are offering
little more than speculation about a teapot in orbit around Jupiter.
RLC
pnyikos
Evidentlly you've already forgotten about how I threw evolution into
the mix, thereby leading up to the "protein takeover" that we both
agree is the really big problem for abiogenesis.
---------------------------------- begin excerpt,
------------------------me going first, then you, then me again
> > And the "protein takeover" that every non-creationist posting to t.o.,
> > except for me, seems to take as an article of faith of the "Mother
> > Earth did it EASILY" sort, requires an extremely precise fit between
> > synthetases and tRNA. No one has ever addressed how that precise fit
> > could reasonably have come about in a mere 500 million or fewer years
> > without intelligent design.
> It takes some effort to consider that you take this seriously.
> Your assertion about the structural requirements for necessarily
> highly regulated membrane pores is poorly taken.
No, just carelessly worded. I forgot to factor evolution into my
statement.
> It is hard to
> know if it is because you don't understand how critical regulation
> of membrane pores is to well regulated cellular function or if
> you over-estimate the requirements for enzymes.
I'm not talking about just any old enzymes. I'm talking about
synthetases, the whole kit and caboodle of synthetases.
Structural proteins could undergo billions of years of gradual
improvement as far as their shapes go, with natural selection easily
lending a hand.
On the other hand, synthetases have to be very precise from the get-go
if you are going to have a translation mechanism in place at all.
It's a pulling up by bootstraps, Catch-22 situation. To produce
synthetases you need great fidelity; to get great fidelity you need
reliable synthetases.
=============== end of excerpt
> They also come in small bits buried
> in posts that spend more time on useless bluster.
By you as well as (you assert) by me. Does the question "You and what
team of Nobel Laureates?" ring a bell?
Another bit of bluster was you acting as though my failure to put
"aminoacyl-tRNA" in front of "synthetases" bespoke so much ignorance
on my part that it was hardly worth talking to me any more.
> One really
> meaty post would be so much more effective
You fail to take the dynamics of talk.origins into account. When I
posted a long and detailed scenario of how bats could have evolved
with natural selection in their favor every step of the way, a few
movers and shakers hit one detail of my scenario and ignored the rest,
and others deferred to them.
IOW, I don't want to waste a couple of hours typing out something
nobody wants to read more than a teeny bit of anyway.
Because, you see, nobody tried to post an alternative scenario for bat
evolution.
I bet no one has posted one to this day, leaving ABEKA holding all the
high cards on this issue.
One of their biology textbooks shows two alternative paths from a
colugo-like ancestor to a bat, with the intermediate steps in both
cases being ridiculously maladapted
But if anyone I've encountered on talk.origins were to talk to the
author, they would probably be content to say, "Nobody ever claimed
the intermediate steps looked like that"--but would make NO effort to
provide plausible ones himself. If pressed, he would content himself
with taunting "Yours is a typical argument from incredulity. You
think that just because YOU can't come up with a good path, it can't
be done:"
And you seem ready to bail out of this discussion in a similar way,
yourself [deleted].
Peter Nyikos
John Harshman
> On Dec 13, 3:45 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> pnyikos wrote:
>
>>> All the hard evidence I have seen is compatible with the assertion
>>> that "intelligent life as we know it" can only be expected to arise
>>> once in a google of universes the same size as the observable
>>> universe, with all the physical laws and fundamental constants exactly
>>> what they are in ours.
>> What you mean to say is that we don't know the probability of the origin
>> of intelligent life. Isn't the hard evidence (what hard evidence?) also
>> compatible with the assertion that intelligent life arises several times
>> in every galaxy?
>
> It may be, but no one has advanced an informed argument to that
> effect.
Why is that relevant? Has anyone advanced an informed argument for any
alternative hypothesis?
>>> Given that, what is more likely: that we are that one lucky life form,
>>> or that some lucky life form beat us to it and is responsible for our
>>> being here?
>> Given that, neither seems more likely. If intelligent life is
>> vanishingly improbable, why is it more likely that it happened once in a
>> googol (spelling, please) of universes, in this one, in this galaxy, but
>> not on this planet, than that it happened once, and on this planet?
>
> See below.
>
>
>>> I postulate that any intelligent technologically advanced
>>> species, realizing that they are alone in the known universe, would
>>> seed a million or more worlds, and if so the odds would seem to favor
>>> the latter answer.
>> That seems a non sequitur to me.
>
> Why? do you think that the probability of intelligent life (complete
> with technology only marginally more advanced than ours) arising from
> prokaryotes is so small that it will only happen in less than one in a
> million planets?
>
> If you think this last question is also a non sequitur, than I'm
> afraid I'll rapidly lose interest in responding to you on this topic,
> and hope we can connect better on sci.bio.paleontology.
Questions aren't non sequiturs. Statements are non sequiturs. You have
claimed that if an intelligent, technological species is likely to seed
life, then that is more likely to be the origin of life on earth than an
indigenous one. I don't see why that follows, and a rational course for
you would be to explain why it does rather than pout.
I don't know what the probability of life is. I am asking why you think
the probability of (intelligent, technological, planet-seeding) life
arising elsewhere in this galaxy is greater than the probability of life
arising here, which seems to be your argument.
If you are going to make such a claim, you must have an auxiliary claim
that the probabilities of life were at least equal 8-4 billion years ago
to those 4-0 billion years ago; increases in probability through time
argue against your claim, while decreases make your claim more likely.
And you must make the second auxiliary claim that intelligent life is
sufficiently plentiful that it's more likely that there was such an
instance 4 billion years ago within 100 light years or so (or whatever
your claimed radius is) than not. I'm not sure how to calculate the
optimal probabilities here, but such life must be common enough to make
a seeding 4 billion years ago more likely than natural origin on earth,
and uncommon enough that the universe is not now crowded with
technological civilizations -- that is, to address the Fermi paradox.
Kleuskes & Moos
The _real_ benefit of panspermia of course being that it places the
origins of life firmly beyond our grasp, and even if some ancient form
of life is ever found on some distant planet, there's no way to tell
if that is the original planet on which life developed or if it just
got panspermified a bit earlier.
And that's the real problem isn't it? How does one show whether or not
any specific organism originated on the planet it was found on?
Bruce Stephens
[...]
> I don't know what the probability of life is. I am asking why you
> think the probability of (intelligent, technological, planet-seeding)
> life arising elsewhere in this galaxy is greater than the probability
> of life arising here, which seems to be your argument.
I can think of one argument. Life is more likely to arise somewhere
else in the galaxy because there's lots more of the rest of the galaxy
than just one planet. (Similary, if everyone buys a lottery ticket it's
more likely than someone else will win it than I will---we've all got
the same probability, but there are more of them.)
(On the other hand we know there's life on earth, which surely ought to
tilt things at least a little.)
[...]
John Harshman
Yes. You seem to have adequately defanged your argument. As I see it, a
better lottery analogy would be to note that we have the winning ticket,
and to suppose it more probable that somebody else bought it, and then
secretly switched tickets with us. That's obviously more likely than
that we bought the winning ticket. I guess so. I dunno.
Bruce Stephens
> Bruce Stephens wrote:
[...]
>> I can think of one argument. Life is more likely to arise somewhere
>> else in the galaxy because there's lots more of the rest of the galaxy
>> than just one planet. (Similary, if everyone buys a lottery ticket it's
>> more likely than someone else will win it than I will---we've all got
>> the same probability, but there are more of them.)
>>
>> (On the other hand we know there's life on earth, which surely ought to
>> tilt things at least a little.)
>
> Yes. You seem to have adequately defanged your argument. As I see it,
> a better lottery analogy would be to note that we have the winning
> ticket, and to suppose it more probable that somebody else bought it,
> and then secretly switched tickets with us. That's obviously more
> likely than that we bought the winning ticket. I guess so. I dunno.
Agreed, it's not terribly convincing. The argument's convincing if you
start with a galaxy of unpopulated planets, choose one, and then ask
whether life is likely to appear on *that* planet rather than any one of
the others.
But really we want to know the conditional probability that life
occurred on Earth or elsewhere, given that there's life here now.
Baron Bodissey
I don't see any qualitative difference between what you are supporting
and the creationists' "god of the gaps" argument, only here it's the
"aliens of the gaps." You find insufficient evidentiary support for
the the mainstream theories so you prefer a theory for which THERE IS
NO EVIDENCE AT ALL? Sorry, you'll have to do better than that.
Baron Bodissey
That remains to be seen, as the cat said who voided into the sugar
bowl.
– Jack Vance
Paul J Gans
Don't bother. He's deliberately missed my point because I know he's
not that stupid. His "just so" story has assumptions too but he's
implicitly assuming a "fair" 12 sided die.
The problem here is that NOBODY has any idea as to all the factors.
If we knew what the early earth environment it might be easy to
show that life forms spontaneously. But we don't. We don't
know all sorts of things. So we can't even start to compute
order of magnitude odds for any particular thing happening.
That's elementary and he knows it.
Paul J Gans
>It isn't that I think you actually have a model in mind.
>I think your guesswork is sad hyperbole, just like it
>was last time. I expect everybody else who is bothering
>to read this has a similar opinion but it was worthwhile
>giving you a chance to show there's more intellectual
>honesty behind your claims than it seems from first
>appearances.
I'd add one more thing. As others, especially Howard,
have said, all this boils down to an argument from
incredulity.
It is also a textbook example of the problems with
computing the conditional probability of past events.
Here's what I mean: What is the chance of life on
earth having arisen naturally on earth GIVEN that there
is, in fact, life on earth?
To compute this still needs a model, etc., but the computation
is not the straight forward computation of the probability
of a future event without any restrictions.
Paul J Gans
If we find life in a different solar system, we will have a better
handle on that.
Of course we first have to define "life", and that's a problem in
itself.
Paul J Gans
>> Bruce Stephens wrote:
>[...]
Exactly. And we are supposed to calculate it without any knowlege
of a model...
pnyikos
> Does anyone have a clue that it couldn't have happened in the time frame
> of earth?
As I said to el cid:
If you'd prefer to tackle the challenge, "Show that life so easy
to
come by that there are at least a million planets in the galaxy
teeming with it" I'd be ecstatic. But I'm willing to settle for
once
in a googol of universes like ours.
> If you have no basis on which to judge probabilities, how
> exactly are you judging those probabilities to be astronomically low?
You are off on the wrong tangent, just like el cid has been all
through this thread.
The key word string here is "I'm willing to settle for". Please
ponder it until you grok it [have you read _Stranger in a Strange
Land_?].
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On Dec 13, 11:17 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Dec 11, 5:02 pm, el cid <elcidbi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > The protein takeover from an RNA world
>
> > > Peter Nyikos has pronounced his claim that the rise of
> > > protein translation from the genetic code is such a
> > > problem in postulating earthly abiogenesis that it is
> > > wiser to postulate that life was seeded here from an
> > > external source.
>
> > Yes. Here is my reasoning for that, which you've already seen--in
> > fact I'll quote some of your words first
>
> > --------------------- begin excerpt from earlier reply to you
>
> > > You are expressing an opinion that the evolution of protein
> > > translation is so very problematic that it is a better bet to
> > > propose life originated elsewhere, developed high technology,
> > > and chose to seed other solar systems. Your foundation for
> > > this opinion
>
> > ...is that in all the years I have challenged people on this, no one
> > has ever suggested a scenario that would account for it. Nor has Behe
> > encountered anyone who did, and he's been at this nonstop for almost a
> > decade and a half.
>
> > All the hard evidence I have seen is compatible with the assertion
> > that "intelligent life as we know it" can only be expected to arise
> > universe, with all the physical laws and fundamental constants exactly
> > what they are in ours.
>
> > Given that, what is more likely: that we are that one lucky life form,
> > or that some lucky life form beat us to it and is responsible for our
> > being here? I postulate that any intelligent technologically advanced
> > species, realizing that they are alone in the known universe, would
> > seed a million or more worlds, and if so the odds would seem to favor
> > the latter answer.
>
> [I recognize this post introduces the risk of significant digression.
> If it becomes necessary I will start a new thread.]
>
> I'll let the biologists deal with your protein improbability
> arguments.
[...]
>I'd like to inquire about the "Why?" behind your hypothesis. Why do
> you think that an "intelligent technologically advanced
> species, realizing that they are alone in the known universe" would
> seed millions of worlds in such a way as to offer no apparent remedy
> for their loneliness?
Look at it this way. There is a long-overdue drive to protect
endangered species here on earth. Some people are so passionate
about this that they would sooner see the human race go extinct than
to go on ravaging the planet indefinitely. There is a talk.abortion
regular who calls himself "W.T.S." who has said more than once that he
wants the human race to go extinct, for example.
I certainly wouldn't go so far, but I am greatly saddened by all the
extinctions that have already occurred. One of the most beautiful and
saddest books ever written is _Vanished Species_, formerly _The
Doomsday Book of Animals_. Have you ever run across it?
What's the connection, you may ask. It is simply this--my scenarios
are the flip side of the coin: instead of just preserving what we
have, let's make it possible for there to be a millionfold greater
diversity.
A race that values species diversity would naturally want it to be
spread far and wide. And, if they come to the realization that it
will never happen without their help, I'd say that is a very powerful
motivator indeed.
> Are you suggesting this species is
> extraordinarily long-lived (on the order of millions of years)?
Why not? *Didelphis* has been around for about 60 million years;
*Sphenodon* for perhaps a lot longer. The spectre of nuclear
annihilation has kept us from thinking in terms of millions of years;
perhaps we should start. The concept of "nuclear winter" seems to
have made nuclear war more unthinkable than ever. [Ironically, we may
have the research of the Alvarezes into the KT extinction to thank for
the concept in the first place.]
And perhaps the panspermists once had wars and unrests just like we
have today, and this grand project to spread life may have brought
them together on a common cause as never before.
>. Like SETI, you have
> to formulate your hypothesis based upon the only example of
> intelligence we know: humans.
Funny you should mention SETI. It is almost as much an article of
faith with a great many people that it will succeed, as "Mother Earth
did it [abiogenesis]" is. Millions of taxpayer dollars were spent on
it until Sen. Proxmire gave it his "golden fleece" award. That did
not sit well with an awfully large segment of the scientific
community. I wonder why.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
IOW, you still haven't figured out how my question shows that the
statement that you thought was a *non sequitur* isn't necessarily
one.
And you ducked the question.
> I don't know what the probability of life is. I am asking why you think
> the probability of (intelligent, technological, planet-seeding) life
> arising elsewhere in this galaxy is greater than the probability of life
> arising here, which seems to be your argument.
>
> If you are going to make such a claim, you must have an auxiliary claim
> that the probabilities of life were at least equal 8-4 billion years ago
> to those 4-0 billion years ago; increases in probability through time
> argue against your claim, while decreases make your claim more likely.
Granted, we do need to factor that sort of thing into our discussion.
But while metal-poor solar systems may have been the norm 12 billion
years ago, by 8 billion years ago I would guess that there were quite
a few where metals of all kinds were available, albeit perhaps a
little less readily on earth.
But then, we've only been mining the more exotic metals for a few
centuries. Given thousands of years, what resources might be
exploited?
> And you must make the second auxiliary claim that intelligent life is
> sufficiently plentiful that it's more likely that there was such an
> instance 4 billion years ago within 100 light years or so (or whatever
> your claimed radius is) than not.
You need to develop a different perspective on this. Are you familiar
with the anthropic principle?
The right perspective is related to that principle. Put it this way:
if our planet wasn't within 10,000 light years (or whatever their
maximum radius was) of the panspermists at the time of their project,
we would not be here in the first place; rather, we would be on a
different planet that WAS within that radius. [That's assuming life
is as improbable as I suspect it is. Even an average of one
intelligent technological species per galaxy would make my scenarios
plausible.]
I know it may be hard to grok this "anthropic principle" perspective.
But I do hope you can manage it.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> Christopher Denney <christopher.den...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Dec 13, 1:39 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >> On Dec 13, 11:23 am, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> >> > Greg G. <ggw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > >On Dec 11, 7:26 pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
> >> > >> Example: I just rolled a single die and got a six. What
> >> > >> are the odds of that happening.
>
> >> > >> Without thought one might respond 1 in 6. However, that assumes
> >> > >> a fair die. There is no evidence to that effect. The die could
> >> > >> easily be biased.
> >> > >We don't even know that it was a six-sided die, either. When
> >> > >calculating hit points in D&D during my younger days used a 20-sided
> >> > >die.
>
> >> And I once posted a "Just so story" to talk.origins in which 12-
> >> fingered Golians had a game where they rolled twelve 12-sided dice
> >> simultaneously.
>
> >> Getting a 12 on all twelve was called "rolling a little Shazou" and I
> >> gave a bit of information as to how likely that was to happen.
>
> >[snip]
> >Compare that to how long it takes if you get to keep any twelve rolled
> >on any die, and just re-roll the non-twelves.
>
> Don't bother. He's deliberately missed my point
Sorry, when you say "googol my eye" with no discernible connection to
what went before, my suspicion is that you had no point to begin with.
> because I know he's
> not that stupid. His "just so" story has assumptions too but he's
> implicitly assuming a "fair" 12 sided die.
Sure, but even if it is only moderately loaded, like the bones of old,
the probability of a Great Shazou is still out of sight.
> The problem here is that NOBODY has any idea as to all the factors.
> If we knew what the early earth environment it might be easy to
> show that life forms spontaneously. But we don't.
We can make educated guesses. That's what origin of life research is
all about.
> We don't
> know all sorts of things. So we can't even start to compute
> order of magnitude odds for any particular thing happening.
>
> That's elementary and he knows it.
>
> --
> --- Paul J. Gans- Hide quoted text -
Of course. And so do you. But does that stop you from chanting,
"Mother Earth did it, this I know;
For Ockham's Razor tells me so."
?
If it does stop you, let's hear what YOUR opinion is as to how life on
earth arose, and why you hold it.
Or don't you have one? In that case, you are no better than the
absent person whom Socrates puts down at the end of Plato's
"Euthydemus".
Peter Nyikos
jillery
<snip to point>
> In fact, at some point well before Christmas I will be taking a
> posting break and only resuming in January. That's why I said "next
> year".
That's a great Christmas present from you.
jillery
> On Dec 13, 2:19 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Dec 11, 8:07 pm, Baron Bodissey <mct5...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > I'm still trying to wrap my head around how seeding by aliens solves
> > > the problem of the origin of life. It just moves the problem to
> > > another world. How is that useful?
>
> > It may be the way it actually happened.
>
> > I'm not trying to figure out the origins of all life in our universe,
> > only the one on our planet.
>
> > Peter Nyikos
>
> I don't see any qualitative difference between what you are supporting
> and the creationists' "god of the gaps" argument, only here it's the
> "aliens of the gaps." You find insufficient evidentiary support for
> the the mainstream theories so you prefer a theory for which THERE IS
> NO EVIDENCE AT ALL? Sorry, you'll have to do better than that.
Perhaps what he is supporting could best be described as a "God of the
gasps" argument: <Gasp!> It's just impossible!! It must be
intelligently designed!!!"
John Harshman
And you don't help by explaining. Assuming your goal is to demonstrate
your intellectual superiority over others, that might be the course to
follow. But if your goal was some form of communication, you are not
doing well.
> And you ducked the question.
My answer, then: I don't know, though I suspect (based on the Fermi
paradox) that the answer is yes. Wasn't that your answer too? If not,
what was that googol of universes about?
>> I don't know what the probability of life is. I am asking why you think
>> the probability of (intelligent, technological, planet-seeding) life
>> arising elsewhere in this galaxy is greater than the probability of life
>> arising here, which seems to be your argument.
>>
>> If you are going to make such a claim, you must have an auxiliary claim
>> that the probabilities of life were at least equal 8-4 billion years ago
>> to those 4-0 billion years ago; increases in probability through time
>> argue against your claim, while decreases make your claim more likely.
>
> Granted, we do need to factor that sort of thing into our discussion.
> But while metal-poor solar systems may have been the norm 12 billion
> years ago, by 8 billion years ago I would guess that there were quite
> a few where metals of all kinds were available, albeit perhaps a
> little less readily on earth.
Nevertheless, you seem to be implying that the probabilities have risen
between 8 and 4 billion years ago, which reduces the force of your
argument at least somewhat.
> But then, we've only been mining the more exotic metals for a few
> centuries. Given thousands of years, what resources might be
> exploited?
I believe it wasn't the technology that was the main point, but the
necessity of these elements for life itself. I might be mistaken.
>> And you must make the second auxiliary claim that intelligent life is
>> sufficiently plentiful that it's more likely that there was such an
>> instance 4 billion years ago within 100 light years or so (or whatever
>> your claimed radius is) than not.
>
> You need to develop a different perspective on this. Are you familiar
> with the anthropic principle?
Yes. But the anthropic principle cuts against your ideas.
> The right perspective is related to that principle. Put it this way:
> if our planet wasn't within 10,000 light years (or whatever their
> maximum radius was) of the panspermists at the time of their project,
> we would not be here in the first place; rather, we would be on a
> different planet that WAS within that radius. [That's assuming life
> is as improbable as I suspect it is. Even an average of one
> intelligent technological species per galaxy would make my scenarios
> plausible.]
But does it make your scenario more probable than life arising on earth?
If so, why?
> I know it may be hard to grok this "anthropic principle" perspective.
> But I do hope you can manage it.
It would help if you tried to justify your claims explicitly rather than
coyly hinting here and there. Sure, if we weren't here, we wouldn't be
here. That means that either if life didn't originate on earth, or if it
didn't originate on some "nearby" planet, we wouldn't be here. But how
does the anthropic principle help choose between those possibilities?
John Harshman
> On Dec 13, 3:45 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>
>> Does anyone have a clue that it couldn't have happened in the time frame
>> of earth?
>
> As I said to el cid:
> If you'd prefer to tackle the challenge, "Show that life so easy
> to
> come by that there are at least a million planets in the galaxy
> teeming with it" I'd be ecstatic. But I'm willing to settle for
> once
> in a googol of universes like ours.
Are you equating lack of a clear demonstration that something is likely
with a demonstration that it's unlikely? I asked for the latter, you
assert the former. Why?
>> If you have no basis on which to judge probabilities, how
>> exactly are you judging those probabilities to be astronomically low?
>
> You are off on the wrong tangent, just like el cid has been all
> through this thread.
Thanks for the explanation.
> The key word string here is "I'm willing to settle for". Please
> ponder it until you grok it [have you read _Stranger in a Strange
> Land_?].
Are you capable of saying what you mean, clearly and explicitly? Or do
you merely dislike doing so?
hersheyh
> On Dec 13, 1:23 pm, el cid <elcidbi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > > On Dec 11, 5:02 pm, el cid <elcidbi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > The protein takeover from an RNA world
>
> > > > Peter Nyikos has pronounced his claim that the rise of
> > > > protein translation from the genetic code is such a
> > > > problem in postulating earthly abiogenesis that it is
> > > > wiser to postulate that life was seeded here from an
> > > > google years for natural processes to produce our current
> > > > biochemistry in an unaided naturalistic manner.
>
> As readers of my first post to this thread can surmise, I made no such
> declaration, nor any declaration remotely along these lines. Not now,
> not ever.
>
> [...]
>
> > > Moreover, any explanation should include the following evidence which
> > > was not available in Peter's 1990 Biochemistry text.
>
> > > Separation of the two functions of tRNAhttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080812135517.htm
>
> > > The natural evolution of a new tRNA to add selenocysteinehttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100812171939.htm
>
> > > The natural evolution of adding pyrrolysinehttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090127112043.htm
>
> Still in the DeDuve _Vital Dust_ sub-basement, somewhat removed from
> the Urey-Miller subbasement but showing little progress towards
> climbing the skyscraper with "protein takeover" in its upper stories.
The evolutionary reason for a protein takeover of many enzymatic
reactions is obvious. For small substrates and reactants, the
kinetics of protein enzymes over RNA enzymes strongly favors the
former. Faster responses in using and modifying small molecules means
outcompeting. It also favors those organisms that more tightly
regulate which *specific* aa gets put where in making a protein.
That's also the reason why nearly all the remaining primitive RNA-
based enzymology involves reactions with relatively large (and often
RNA) molecules. They were retained in the very cases where ribozyme
activity competes most favorably with protein-based enzymology.
> > > Note: the more usual way of generating new amino acids is post-
> > > translational modification. But the above two examples show that that
> > > is not the only way that nature produces a work-around. It also opens
> > > up the possibility of artificially modifying the genetic code to
> > > generate proteins with more than the usual 20 aa's.
>
> Kid stuff.
Not for the natural evolution of a new aa. That is quite difficult.
Only two examples seen so far. My guess is that the last aa which got
"specified" is tryptophan. And, if you were to read a bit more about
aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, you would learn that there are two
different classes of these proteins. What that allows is for a
primitive aa-tRNA synthetase to modify the relevant two domains (one
that recognizes the right tRNA and the site of the reaction that
specifies the aa). Evolutionarily, these enzymes typically display
the canonical phylogenetic pattern of having its root between the
synthetases of eubacteria and the archaeal/eucaryotic branch.
Now, what multidomain means is that the synthetases have two
completely independent sites that have function. Mutations in one
does not affect the function of the other. That makes it relatively
easy to undergo a duplication and modification with increased or
changed specificity. In fact, the existence of tRNA suppressors show
that it is possible to "fool" aatRNA synthetases. The error rate of
*modern* aatRNA synthetases is low but measureable (about 1 in
10,000), but many of the modern synthetases also have an editing
function (that can be independently knocked out without preventing
charging). If the average protein is 300 aa long, that error rate
would mean that about 1 protein in 33 will contain an aa error due to
faulty loading (this probably differs depending on the aa content of
the protein).
Again, the problem that Peter seems to have is his idea that protein
synthesis has to be perfect. Organisms only care about "sufficient".
Errors in synthesis that have an insignificant effect on organismal
reproductive success are tolerated if the 'cost' of reducing those
errors (usually in taking more time to edit or correct) is
significantly higher than the increased value of the lower error rate
wrt reproductive success.
> > > Specifically, of course, it is Peter's unwarranted assumption that
> > > early protein synthesis had to involve the same degree of specificity
> > > as seen in the modern canonical genetic code organisms that is his
> > > problem.
>
> Of course, I made no such assumption, and if Hershey had read what I
> posted on the other thread, he would know that I postulated the
> Scenario 3C panspermists to have structural proteins in their bodies,
> doing such work as lining pores in their cells.
So how does that make the Scenario 3C panspermists immune to the
greater efficiency of protein catalysts when dealing with small
molecule modification that would lead to takeover of those functions
by protein?
>
> But then, maybe he did read it, and maybe he knows it. With Hershey,
> you never can tell.
>
> I hypothesize not much in the way of protein-based enzymes, and
> certainly no genetically based aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, in Scenario
> 3C. IOW, any molecules of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase would arise by
> accident, with no real chance of being the basis for a protein
> takeover.
I see plenty of reason for a protein takeover at the enzymatically
active site of the synthetases wrt the kinetics of loading. Less so
at the tRNA recognition site. But binding/recognition of short
stretches of nucleotides probably was an early protein function.
> > >Early proteins, although certainly accidentally
> > > enzymatically useful, probably played more structural roles that did
> > > not require high specificity.
>
> It's almost as if he were plagiarizing my Scenario 3C, these last
> three lines of his.
Just wonder why you think the switch to protein enzymology unlikely.
>
> [...]
>
> > Indeed and I've got more.
>
> > If Peter provides his scenario, the one from which he estimates
> > a google years, we can cite all sorts of science that is useful
> > to gage the actual challenges in the steps toward evolution
> > of polypeptide synthesis via the genetic code.
>
> > I'm trying to work toward that because, well because that's the
> > way a scientist would try to break it down.
>
> Of course. And I am hoping you will do just that
>
> > If he doesn't have a model, then his claim is ungrounded and
> > unfounded.
>
> Are you still referring to this wildly inaccurate "once in a googol of
> years" bit that I never advanced?
>
> Please stick to what I actually did say, and which I reposted to this
> thread with additional comments. [Keywords: challenge, googolplex]
>
> Peter Nyikos
Mark Isaak
> On Dec 13, 10:27 pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
> [...]
>> The problem here is that NOBODY has any idea as to all the factors. If
>> we knew what the early earth environment it might be easy to show that
>> life forms spontaneously. But we don't.
>
> We can make educated guesses. That's what origin of life research is
> all about.
>
>> We don't know all sorts of things. So we can't even start to
>> compute order of magnitude odds for any particular thing happening.
>>
>> That's elementary and he knows it.
>
> Of course. And so do you. But does that stop you from chanting,
>
> "Mother Earth did it, this I know;
> For Ockham's Razor tells me so."
> ?
> If it does stop you, let's hear what YOUR opinion is as to how life on
> earth arose, and why you hold it.
I don't get it. I thought you had already admitted that how life arose
is irrelevant for your argument, since abiogenesis is a constant among
all the alternatives under discussion.
The only thing you possibly get from extraterrestrial designers is help
over the unknown of the origin of one or two biochemical systems after
life arose. Not an improbability, an unknown. Replacing one unknown
with several unknowns, some of which appear very improbable, gets you
what, exactly?
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) earthlink (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 Dec 11, 5:02 pm, el cid <elcidbi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> [...]
>> These answers matter to me to know if it is worth the effort of
>> providing an alternative view. If there's really no more to it than
>> some vague impression derived from reading a few whimsical books by
>> Crick and De Duve,
>
> Not a vague impression. A very clear impression that no one has a clue
> as to how it could have occurred in the time frame of our universe.
So you admit that all you have is an argument from incredulity?
Paul J Gans
Or: <Gasp!> How could that happen! The odds must
be a googol to one against!!!
Walter Bushell
Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
When the odds are a googol to 1 against the event is inevitable. But the
odds have to be exact.
--
The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
is good, or is it the reverse?
pnyikos
> On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 11:17:07 -0800, pnyikos wrote:
> > On Dec 11, 5:02 pm, el cid <elcidbi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > [...]
> >> These answers matter to me to know if it is worth the effort of
> >> providing an alternative view. If there's really no more to it than
> >> some vague impression derived from reading a few whimsical books by
> >> Crick and De Duve,
>
> > Not a vague impression. A very clear impression that no one has a clue
> > as to how it could have occurred in the time frame of our universe.
>
> So you admit that all you have is an argument from incredulity?
As soon as you and a hefty portion of the other U. of Ediacara members
admit that labels like "argument from incredulity" are all you have to
support y'alls belief that it arose naturally *on earth*. Don't
forget, I am very much inclined to the belief that it arose natually
on the home planet of the panspermists.
In other words, you admit y'all are basically polemicists rather than
people sincerely interested in the truth about how life on earth
began.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On Dec 13, 7:52 pm, Baron Bodissey <mct5...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Dec 13, 2:19 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Dec 11, 8:07 pm, Baron Bodissey <mct5...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > > I'm still trying to wrap my head around how seeding by aliens solves
> > > > the problem of the origin of life. It just moves the problem to
> > > > another world. How is that useful?
>
> > > It may be the way it actually happened.
>
> > > I'm not trying to figure out the origins of all life in our universe,
> > > only the one on our planet.
>
> > > Peter Nyikos
>
> > I don't see any qualitative difference between what you are supporting
> > and the creationists' "god of the gaps" argument, only here it's the
> > "aliens of the gaps."
Baron strikes me as another polemicist rather than one interested in
science. So do you, jillery. Much more so even than Mark Isaak.
The aliens are supposed to have arisen by abiogenesis, and if you
read my first post to this thread from which "el cid" has conveniently
disappeared, you will see just why I propose what I do.
You may also profit from reading my responses to John Harshman's
opining that I had committed a non sequitur on this score.
> >You find insufficient evidentiary support for
> > the the mainstream theories
I find NO evidentiary support for them, except wild extrapolation from
what has been accomplished to what is likely to happen. Sort of like
predicting that human track stars will some day break the one-minute
mile.
> Perhaps what he is supporting could best be described as a "God of the
> gasps" argument: <Gasp!> It's just impossible!! It must be
> intelligently designed!!!"
You are babbling about a figment of your imagination. In fact, the
first half of your wisecrack seems like a one-size-fits-all general
put-down of anyone who raises objections to any theory that you
cherish.
Peter Nyikos
Bruce Stephens
[...]
> Don't forget, I am very much inclined to the belief that it arose
> natually on the home planet of the panspermists.
And then came here. Why not cut out the middle-man and just have life
start here?
[...]
pnyikos
> pnyikos wrote:
> > On Dec 13, 4:57 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >> pnyikos wrote:
> >>> On Dec 13, 3:45 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >>>> pnyikos wrote:
> >>>>> All the hard evidence I have seen is compatible with the assertion
> >>>>> that "intelligent life as we know it" can only be expected to arise
> >>>>> once in a google of universes the same size as the observable
> >>>>> universe, with all the physical laws and fundamental constants exactly
> >>>>> what they are in ours.
> >>>> >Given that, what is more likely: that we are that one lucky life form,
> >>>>> or that some lucky life form beat us to it and is responsible for our
> >>>>> being here?
[...]
> >>>>> I postulate that any intelligent technologically advanced
> >>>>> species, realizing that they are alone in the known universe, would
> >>>>> seed a million or more worlds, and if so the odds would seem to favor
> >>>>> the latter answer.
>
> >>>> That seems a non sequitur to me.
You are awfully slow on the uptake here, John. I expected you to be a
better reasoner than you are turning out to be here.
> >>> Why? do you think that the probability of intelligent life (complete
> >>> with technology only marginally more advanced than ours) arising from
> >>> prokaryotes is so small that it will only happen in less than one in a
> >>> million planets?
>
> >>> If you think this last question is also a non sequitur, than I'm
> >>> afraid I'll rapidly lose interest in responding to you on this topic,
> >>> and hope we can connect better on sci.bio.paleontology.
>
> >> Questions aren't non sequiturs. Statements are non sequiturs. You have
> >> claimed that if an intelligent, technological species is likely to seed
> >> life, then that is more likely to be the origin of life on earth than an
> >> indigenous one. I don't see why that follows,
>
> > IOW, you still haven't figured out how my question shows that the
> > statement that you thought was a *non sequitur* isn't necessarily
> > one.
>
> And you don't help by explaining.
What is your line of work? I took you for a scientist able do draw
obvious inferences. Was I mistaken?
Look. Suppose prokaryotes can be expected to give rise to a species
capable of a technological civilization in 4 billion years on the
average of 1 out of 1000 planets with as good initial conditions as
ours, and my other assumptions above are satisfied, then the odds are
1000 to 1 that we are the result of panspermy rather than the species
on which it falls to either be alone in the galaxy, or to set events
in motion to produce others.
> Assuming your goal is to demonstrate
> your intellectual superiority over others,
I'm afraid what I am demonstrating here is your intellectual
inferiority to most of my calculus students. And believe me, that was
the furthest thing from my mind.
> But if your goal was some form of communication, you are not
> doing well.
> > And you ducked the question.
>
> My answer, then: I don't know, though I suspect (based on the Fermi
> paradox) that the answer is yes. Wasn't that your answer too?
Absolutely not. The Fermi paradox works beautifully even if a million
seedings give rise to 1000 intelligent species in 4 billion years
time. Because that is enough time for the 1000 species to be
distributed pretty evenly in the portion of the galaxy outside the
central hub.
Peter Nyikos
John Harshman
> On Dec 14, 1:31 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> pnyikos wrote:
>>> On Dec 13, 4:57 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>>> pnyikos wrote:
>>>>> On Dec 13, 3:45 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>>>>> pnyikos wrote:
>>>>>>> All the hard evidence I have seen is compatible with the assertion
>>>>>>> that "intelligent life as we know it" can only be expected to arise
>>>>>>> once in a google of universes the same size as the observable
>>>>>>> universe, with all the physical laws and fundamental constants exactly
>>>>>>> what they are in ours.
> [...]
>
>>>>>>> Given that, what is more likely: that we are that one lucky life form,
>>>>>>> or that some lucky life form beat us to it and is responsible for our
>>>>>>> being here?
> [...]
>>>>>>> I postulate that any intelligent technologically advanced
>>>>>>> species, realizing that they are alone in the known universe, would
>>>>>>> seed a million or more worlds, and if so the odds would seem to favor
>>>>>>> the latter answer.
>>>>>> That seems a non sequitur to me.
>
> You are awfully slow on the uptake here, John. I expected you to be a
> better reasoner than you are turning out to be here.
What purpose did that serve?
>>>>> Why? do you think that the probability of intelligent life (complete
>>>>> with technology only marginally more advanced than ours) arising from
>>>>> prokaryotes is so small that it will only happen in less than one in a
>>>>> million planets?
>>>>> If you think this last question is also a non sequitur, than I'm
>>>>> afraid I'll rapidly lose interest in responding to you on this topic,
>>>>> and hope we can connect better on sci.bio.paleontology.
>>>> Questions aren't non sequiturs. Statements are non sequiturs. You have
>>>> claimed that if an intelligent, technological species is likely to seed
>>>> life, then that is more likely to be the origin of life on earth than an
>>>> indigenous one. I don't see why that follows,
>>> IOW, you still haven't figured out how my question shows that the
>>> statement that you thought was a *non sequitur* isn't necessarily
>>> one.
>> And you don't help by explaining.
>
> What is your line of work? I took you for a scientist able do draw
> obvious inferences. Was I mistaken?
You are mistaken about a great many things. Stop playing these silly
dominance games.
> Look. Suppose prokaryotes can be expected to give rise to a species
> capable of a technological civilization in 4 billion years on the
> average of 1 out of 1000 planets with as good initial conditions as
> ours, and my other assumptions above are satisfied, then the odds are
> 1000 to 1 that we are the result of panspermy rather than the species
> on which it falls to either be alone in the galaxy, or to set events
> in motion to produce others.
That's a very bad way to compute the odds. But of course there is no way
to compute the odds, so one bad way might be as good as another.
>> Assuming your goal is to demonstrate
>> your intellectual superiority over others,
>
> I'm afraid what I am demonstrating here is your intellectual
> inferiority to most of my calculus students. And believe me, that was
> the furthest thing from my mind.
OK, we're all agreed that I'm an idiot. Happy now? Can we go on? Do you
realize how long you spent calling me an idiot before you bothered even
trying to explain yourself? All that time could have been spent actually
explaining yourself.
>> But if your goal was some form of communication, you are not
>> doing well.
>
>>> And you ducked the question.
>> My answer, then: I don't know, though I suspect (based on the Fermi
>> paradox) that the answer is yes. Wasn't that your answer too?
>
> Absolutely not. The Fermi paradox works beautifully even if a million
> seedings give rise to 1000 intelligent species in 4 billion years
> time. Because that is enough time for the 1000 species to be
> distributed pretty evenly in the portion of the galaxy outside the
> central hub.
What, now the aliens are seeding the entire galaxy? I really don't think
any of your time scales are working. These aliens seed the galaxy and
then disappear before they have any chance to take advantage of their
work. Then a thousand other species appears, none of which bothers to
seed the galaxy or take advantage of previous work. Or perhaps they too
disappear before their presence can become apparent.
hersheyh
> On Dec 14, 12:13 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 11:17:07 -0800, pnyikos wrote:
> > > On Dec 11, 5:02 pm, el cid <elcidbi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > [...]
> > >> These answers matter to me to know if it is worth the effort of
> > >> providing an alternative view. If there's really no more to it than
> > >> some vague impression derived from reading a few whimsical books by
> > >> Crick and De Duve,
>
> > > Not a vague impression. A very clear impression that no one has a clue
> > > as to how it could have occurred in the time frame of our universe.
>
> > So you admit that all you have is an argument from incredulity?
>
> As soon as you and a hefty portion of the other U. of Ediacara members
> admit that labels like "argument from incredulity" are all you have to
> support y'alls belief that it arose naturally *on earth*.
What we have is the inherently greater simplicity of explanations that
are earth-bound (which simplicity is favored by the rules of science
used since Ockham). It is you who have the "argument from
incredulity" that you think justifies a one-off origin.
> Don't
> forget, I am very much inclined to the belief that it arose natually
> on the home planet of the panspermists.
>
> In other words, you admit y'all are basically polemicists rather than
> people sincerely interested in the truth about how life on earth
> began.
No. We speculate on reasonable ways for the two systems you claim
"can't evolve" could actually evolve without the necessity of a one-
off origin. You ignore all the problems of a one-off origin and
provide precisely no details or evidence for why such a one-off is
necessary other than your personal (and not particularly well-
informed) incredulity.
>
> Peter Nyikos
Paul J Gans
>On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 11:17:07 -0800, pnyikos wrote:
>> On Dec 11, 5:02 pm, el cid <elcidbi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> [...]
>>> These answers matter to me to know if it is worth the effort of
>>> providing an alternative view. If there's really no more to it than
>>> some vague impression derived from reading a few whimsical books by
>>> Crick and De Duve,
>>
>> Not a vague impression. A very clear impression that no one has a clue
>> as to how it could have occurred in the time frame of our universe.
>So you admit that all you have is an argument from incredulity?
He doesn't need to admit it. What he has presented is an argument
from increduility. He could have data, experiments, whatever. But
he's not presented them. What he's presented is incredulity.
The problem is that we are not talking to your average creationist.
So you credit him with understanding of how all this science stuff
works. It isn't at all clear that he does.
Paul J Gans
>pnyikos wrote:
[snip]
>> Look. Suppose prokaryotes can be expected to give rise to a species
>> capable of a technological civilization in 4 billion years on the
>> average of 1 out of 1000 planets with as good initial conditions as
>> ours, and my other assumptions above are satisfied, then the odds are
>> 1000 to 1 that we are the result of panspermy rather than the species
>> on which it falls to either be alone in the galaxy, or to set events
>> in motion to produce others.
>That's a very bad way to compute the odds. But of course there is no way
>to compute the odds, so one bad way might be as good as another.
It is not just a bad way to calculate the odds, it is an INCORRECT
WAY to calculate the odds. The calculation is not of the odds
that we are the result of panspermy. The proper (and impossible)
calculation is of the odds that life on earth is the result of panspermy
GIVEN that there is life on earth.
Now our friend ought to understand that. If he doesn't, he ought to
run down the hall and check with some of his friends in his department
who know about how to compute conditional probabilities.
jillery
> On Dec 14, 1:12�am, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Dec 13, 7:52 pm, Baron Bodissey <mct5...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Dec 13, 2:19 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Dec 11, 8:07 pm, Baron Bodissey <mct5...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > I'm still trying to wrap my head around how seeding by aliens solves
> > > > > the problem of the origin of life. It just moves the problem to
> > > > > another world. How is that useful?
>
> > > > It may be the way it actually happened.
>
> > > > I'm not trying to figure out the origins of all life in our universe,
> > > > only the one on our planet.
>
> > > > Peter Nyikos
>
> > > I don't see any qualitative difference between what you are supporting
> > > and the creationists' "god of the gaps" argument, only here it's the
> > > "aliens of the gaps."
>
> Baron strikes me as another polemicist rather than one interested in
> science. �So do you, jillery. �Much more so even than Mark Isaak.
A rather odd comment, coming from someone whose entire contribution is
bombast and hyperbole.
> �The aliens are supposed to have arisen by abiogenesis, and if you
> read my first post to this thread from which "el cid" has conveniently
> disappeared, you will see just why I propose what I do.
Making vague references to previous vague references doesn't help your
case.
> You may also profit from reading my responses to John Harshman's
> opining that I had committed a non sequitur on this score.
>
> > >You find insufficient evidentiary support for
> > > the the mainstream theories
>
> I find NO evidentiary support for them, except wild extrapolation from
> what has been accomplished to what is likely to happen. �Sort of like
> predicting that human track stars will some day break the one-minute
> mile.
You have yet to provide evidence for your wild extrapolation.
> > Perhaps what he is supporting could best be described as a "God of the
> > gasps" argument: �<Gasp!> It's just impossible!! It must be
> > intelligently designed!!!"
>
> You are babbling about a figment of your imagination. � In fact, the
> first half of your �wisecrack seems like a one-size-fits-all general
> put-down of anyone who raises objections to any theory that you
> cherish.
You failed to blind me with your brilliance, and you failed to baffle
me with your BS. I still await your evidence. Apparently in vain.
pnyikos
A purpose inspired by your steady stream of put-downs as to my not
being clear enough: I was hoping you'd do a little reflection and
maybe, just maybe, start to think that at lleast SOME of our failure
to connect might be due to you.
Did it work? From some flamebait you wrote below {some of it deleted,
but I'll deal with it if you insist} it looks as though it didn't.
> >>>>> Why? do you think that the probability of intelligent life (complete
> >>>>> with technology only marginally more advanced than ours) arising from
> >>>>> prokaryotes is so small that it will only happen in less than one in a
> >>>>> million planets?
> >>>>> If you think this last question is also a non sequitur, than I'm
> >>>>> afraid I'll rapidly lose interest in responding to you on this topic,
> >>>>> and hope we can connect better on sci.bio.paleontology.
> >>>> Questions aren't non sequiturs. Statements are non sequiturs. You have
> >>>> claimed that if an intelligent, technological species is likely to seed
> >>>> life, then that is more likely to be the origin of life on earth than an
> >>>> indigenous one. I don't see why that follows,
> >>> IOW, you still haven't figured out how my question shows that the
> >>> statement that you thought was a *non sequitur* isn't necessarily
> >>> one.
> >> And you don't help by explaining.
>
> > What is your line of work? I took you for a scientist able do draw
> > obvious inferences. Was I mistaken?
>
> You are mistaken about a great many things.
You don't have the data to make that claim.
[flamebait deleted here]
> > Look. Suppose prokaryotes can be expected to give rise to a species
> > capable of a technological civilization in 4 billion years on the
> > average of 1 out of 1000 planets with as good initial conditions as
> > ours, and my other assumptions above are satisfied, then the odds are
> > 1000 to 1 that we are the result of panspermy rather than the species
> > on which it falls to either be alone in the galaxy, or to set events
> > in motion to produce others.
>
> That's a very bad way to compute the odds.
Actually, it is mathematically airtight. Apparently your real
complaint is that my figure of 1 tech civ in 1000 developing was
pulled out of hat. And it was: it was simply adopted for illustrative
purposes. I own an astronomy textbook, written on the university
level in the 1990's, whose authors think 1 in 100 is a plausible lower
bound, and 90% a plausible upper bound, for the chances of life, once
it has begun naturally on a planet, to produce an intelligent species
through evolution.
I see your opinion tends in the opposite direction. But even if the
odds are 1 in 100,000, the initial assumptions favor us developing via
panspermy, by the same reasoning. You may argue with the initial
premises, but if you still don't follow the reasoning, I'll be glad to
expound further.
> > I'm afraid what I am demonstrating here is your intellectual
> > inferiority to most of my calculus students. And believe me, that was
> > the furthest thing from my mind.
> OK, we're all agreed that I'm an idiot.
No, we are not. I prefer to think you were sleepy during the earlier
encounters, and still are. Or inattentive. Or complacent in your
belief that all failures by me to get my points across lie with me,
and therefore not calling for any mental effort on your part.
> Happy now? Can we go on? Do you
> realize how long you spent calling me an idiot before you bothered even
> trying to explain yourself?
No time at all. Or if you are so defensive over the few things I
posted above as to refer to it as "calling [you] an idiot." the answer
is "three lines", and then I immediately went into an explanation of
many more lines than that.
Funny, it was you who warned me against "Obsessive defensiveness" and
"paranoia" in our earliest encounters on that thread on intelligent
design.
And I took the advice to heart. I could have labeled two times as
many statements of "jillery" false as I did, as well as sneered at his
illogical use of "strawman" ["red herring" would at least have made
sense] but refrained from doing so on the basis of your advice.
And because I refrained from that sneer, he has falsely accused me of
"admitting" that my question was a strawman.
[more flamebait by you deleted here]
Note the earlier implication that the failure to communicate was
mostly or all my fault:
> >> But if your goal was some form of communication, you are not
> >> doing well.
[continued in separate follow-up]
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >pnyikos wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >> Look. Suppose prokaryotes can be expected to give rise to a species
> >> capable of a technological civilization in 4 billion years on the
> >> average of 1 out of 1000 planets with as good initial conditions as
> >> ours, and my other assumptions above are satisfied, then the odds are
> >> 1000 to 1 that we are the result of panspermy rather than the species
> >> on which it falls to either be alone in the galaxy, or to set events
> >> in motion to produce others.
> >That's a very bad way to compute the odds. But of course there is no way
> >to compute the odds, so one bad way might be as good as another.
>
> It is not just a bad way to calculate the odds, it is an INCORRECT
> WAY to calculate the odds. The calculation is not of the odds
> that we are the result of panspermy. The proper (and impossible)
> calculation is of the odds that life on earth is the result of panspermy
> GIVEN that there is life on earth.
That is exactly the calculation that i am doing, starting with some
premises that people are free to dispute. As anyone reading my first
post to this thread can see, I am taking the fact that there is life
on earth as a given.
Paul Gans doesn't see that, because he doesn't understand the
anthropic principle.
Gans is evidently treating me the way I am treating Hershey, without
however breathing a word to that effect, and so he can pretend not to
see any explanations I post that aren't visible in Google in the posts
of others.
It is not so with my treatment of Hershey: I simply don't post things
that fly in the face of *sincere* things he posts.
I worked from a set of premises that people are free to dispute. And
two people have actually made the effort, and I have responded at
length to one of them, and will respond to the other soon.
And none of them goes by the name of Gans, or Harshman, or Hershey,
or "el cid".
> Now our friend ought to understand that. If he doesn't, he ought to
> run down the hall and check with some of his friends in his department
> who know about how to compute conditional probabilities.
I've known how to do that since I was a college student, but Gans
evidently loves to pretend otherwise on the basis of ZERO evidence.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On Dec 14, 4:47 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Dec 14, 1:12 am, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Dec 13, 7:52 pm, Baron Bodissey <mct5...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Dec 13, 2:19 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Dec 11, 8:07 pm, Baron Bodissey <mct5...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > > I'm still trying to wrap my head around how seeding by aliens solves
> > > > > > the problem of the origin of life. It just moves the problem to
> > > > > > another world. How is that useful?
>
> > > > > It may be the way it actually happened.
>
> > > > > I'm not trying to figure out the origins of all life in our universe,
> > > > > only the one on our planet.
>
> > > > > Peter Nyikos
>
> > > > I don't see any qualitative difference between what you are supporting
> > > > and the creationists' "god of the gaps" argument, only here it's the
> > > > "aliens of the gaps."
>
> > Baron strikes me as another polemicist rather than one interested in
> > science. So do you, jillery. Much more so even than Mark Isaak.
>
> A rather odd comment, coming from someone whose entire contribution is
> bombast and hyperbole.
A classic case of projection, from someone who deleted all the sincere
scientifically oriented statements from the following pos when he
replied, and hasn't dealt with any of what he deleted since then; in
fact, he falselly claimed that I hadn't posted any scientific talk in
the following post:
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 17:51:15 -0800 (PST)
Local: Wed, Dec 8 2010 8:51 pm
Subject: Re: The futility of Intelligent Desgin
On Dec 7, 8:29 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 6, 9:51 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Dec 6, 5:12 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > Isn't it obvious that Crick was talking about Intelligent Design?
> > > Here's what I quoted to Ron O.:
> > > The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
> > > microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
> > > conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
> > > combine all the desirable properties within one single type
> > > of organism or to send many different organisms is not
> > > completely clear.
> > > --Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
> > > Simon and Schuster, 1981
> > No he was not. Crick was talking about organisms similar to GMOs.
That's a mild form of Intelligent Design, but he didn't necessarily
confine himself to only such GMOs as our present technology (let alone
the technology of his day) is capable of producing. He didn't try to
speculate just what went into producing those strains.
It certainly is reasonable to suppose that they could have developed
a bacterial flagellum. Did you see my reply yesterday that mentioned
it?
> > Crick's idea here says nothing about how his senders came to be, or
> > how his prebiotic organisms develop once they arrive.
Read the book. Did you expect me to type out a whole chapter for
y'all ("here").
> >Crick's
> > explained his intent was to get around the problems he saw with
> > abiogenesis on Earth. More tellingly, Crick explicitly denied
> > connection between these words and ID.
Maybe ID as you and others here conceive it. I simply take the
concept, Intelligent Design and use it literally, hypothesizing
whatever form seems reasonable to me. And it's not nearly as broad a
concept as most ID theorists envision.
> I see you are distracted. If you don't snip it out, a summary of your
> replies to me might help:
> 1. You require a rigorous standard of evidence for evolution,
No need to require any. I've been convinced of it since the age of
12.
> but
> provide no evidence for ID or panspermy.
And no one here has provided evidence for "Mother Earth did it" since
I returned to this newsgroup last week, although Harshman said a few
things whose relevance is yet to be ascertained.
Did you know that I required no evidence for "Mother Earth did it"
until the age of 48? I just went along with the conventional wisdom
that life is plentiful in our galaxy. What opened my eyes, strangely
enough, was a book, _Vital Dust_ whose author, Christian DeDuve, was
wholeheartedly in favor of the plentifulness of life.
What got me really thinking was that he spent page after page after
page devoted to detailed accounts of how to go from prebiotic soup to
compounds about on the level of AA-tRNA and then suddenly had a few
compounds about on the level of AA-tRNA and then suddenly had a few
pages describing the incredibly precise and complicated protein
translation process -- and no evolutionary stage in between.
It is as though someone had spent a third of a big book describing the
history of the development of tools and machines up to the steam
turbine of Hero of Alexandria, and said, "The Saturn V rocket, which
took men to the moon in 1969, was a product of the same human
intelligence that produced these earlier devices in the way I've shown
you" and then gone on to describe one marvel of 20-21st century
technology after another, with no mention of the industrial
revolution, etc.
> 2. You plead ignorance of developements about ID
Political developments. I lost interest after reading about the Dover
PA incident. Creationists badly overplaying their hand and then
hoping to be rescued from their idiocies by Discovery Institute.
I care about the scientific side of ID. It seems that precious few
other people here do. Seems the main motivation is political,
especially where Ron O. is concerned. He's arguably the most
political animal I've ever encountered -- and he says this is NOT a
political newsgroup!
What's your motivation? Are you here because you perceive that
creationism is the Achilles' heel of the Judeo-Christian tradition,
which you detest?
Don't be surprised by my question. Turnabout is fair play.
> and evolutionary theory
Nonsense. I am not up to date on all aspects of it, but you've seen
precious little in the way of ignorance -- because there has been
precious little talk about it on this thread.
> since you stopped posting to T.O., then act as if your claimed
> ignorance shouldn't affect your ability to discuss these topics
> intelligently.
I'm not interested in the folly of creationists who have only a dim
idea of what Discovery Institute and what it calls ID are all about,
and try to exploit the term "ID" for fundie ends. They've made their
beds, they get to sleep in them -- and it won't be a pleasant
experience in the long run.
Continued in next follow-up.
Peter Nyikos
====================== end of post archived in:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/0a32ba18a029bd17
Message-ID:
<320c4970-97d7-4feb...@z26g2000prf.googlegroups.com>
"jillery" decided to play the wounded innocent over my having asked
him the pointed question towards the end. When I explained that I was
just repaying him for all the false statements about me, that [s]he
had not made any false statements about me. Besides the ones I
explicitly labeled "nonsense,", Statement 1 is false, and I hoped my
reply made that clear.
And in the follow-up I made immediately after the post you see up
there, I labeled jillery Statement 3 "Wrong" and explained why; I
countered with "I guesss you didn't read..." and explained why it was
false without labeling it as such. Statement 4 was utterly false, and
I've explained that in another post from which "jillery" deleted the
explanation in reply. And Statement 5 was "Wrong again". See:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/b0a9d92793088212
Message-ID: <9a1d945f-5a2d-4dce-
ade0-2d9...@j32g2000prh.googlegroups.com>
"jillery' is playing a destructive game, one which is tolerated (and
possibly even encouraged) because this newsgroup is political to the
core, and I am not of the Party of Mother Earth Did It to which all
the evolutionists here except me seem to belong.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
wrote:
Keep reading my replies to John Harshman. I try to explain it there,
and I'd be pleased if you follow up to any of my replies to him with
your reactions.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 21:34:23 -0800, pnyikos wrote:
> > On Dec 13, 10:27 pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
> > [...]
> >> The problem here is that NOBODY has any idea as to all the factors. If
> >> we knew what the early earth environment it might be easy to show that
> >> life forms spontaneously. But we don't.
>
> > We can make educated guesses. That's what origin of life research is
> > all about.
>
> >> We don't know all sorts of things. So we can't even start to
> >> compute order of magnitude odds for any particular thing happening.
>
> >> That's elementary and he knows it.
>
> > Of course. And so do you. But does that stop you from chanting,
>
> > "Mother Earth did it, this I know;
> > For Ockham's Razor tells me so."
> > ?
> > If it does stop you, let's hear what YOUR opinion is as to how life on
> > earth arose, and why you hold it.
>
> I don't get it. I thought you had already admitted that how life arose
> is irrelevant for your argument, since abiogenesis is a constant among
> all the alternatives under discussion.
>
> The only thing you possibly get from extraterrestrial designers is help
> over the unknown of the origin of one or two biochemical systems after
> life arose.
Not just any old systems: the very *sine qua non* of life as we know
it where Scenarios 3C and (to a lesser extent) 3B are concerned: the
protein translation mechanism.
As for Scenario 3A, I'm explaining to John Harshman why I think the
odds are in favor of directed panspermy even if one does not suppose
they are responsible for ANY biochemical systems.
I've mentioned the bacterial flagellum more than once. I agree it is
very weak support for directed panspermy all by itself. But the
conditional probability of the flagellum being designed, GIVEN the
premise that we arose by directed panspermy, is quite high IMHO.
[There, let Gans put that in his pipe and smoke it.]
I've given one reason for thinking that, in response to Harshman,
whose cladistic expertise abandoned him when I used the cladists'
bread-and-butter word "derived" for the gram-positive bacterial
flagellum.
Peter Nyikos
John Stockwell
> On Dec 15, 3:35 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 7, 8:29 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Dec 6, 9:51 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Dec 6, 5:12 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > Isn't it obvious that Crick was talking about Intelligent Design?
> > > > Here's what I quoted to Ron O.:
> > > > The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
> > > > microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
> > > > conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
> > > > combine all the desirable properties within one single type
> > > > of organism or to send many different organisms is not
> > > > completely clear.
> > > > --Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
> > > > Simon and Schuster, 1981
> > > No he was not. Crick was talking about organisms similar to GMOs.
>
> That's a mild form of Intelligent Design, but he didn't necessarily
> confine himself to only such GMOs as our present technology (let alone
> the technology of his day) is capable of producing. He didn't try to
> speculate just what went into producing those strains.
I think that Crick was making a statement of desperation, wherein he
was lead out of the
realm of science!
In Crick's time it seemed
that there was a total impasse. You need to have proteins to make
enzymes, and you
needed enzymes to make proteins. We know know that RNA can act as an
enzyme,
so the question is now "what else can act as an enzyme?" "What else
can act as a protein?
So essentially it is no longer
"inconceivable" for proteins and enzymes to have been the result of
something on a chain
of abiogenesis.
So the attempt to use scientific impasses as a "design detector" once
again is shown to be
a faulty mode of thinking. We, in fact, do not detect design.,
*ever*. What we do is model
the origin of objects, and those objects that we model as
manufactured, we do so only if we have
knowledge of the manufacturing process, and physical evidence that
that process were applied.
> Peter Nyikos
-John
pnyikos
> On Dec 13, 10:13 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
Here are those scenarios again, preserved by K&M:
> > 3A The panspermists were a species with essentially the same
> > biochemistry as our own. ID component need not be there at all, or
> > may range from genetic modification of the sort we do, to building of
> > production of whole organelles, such as flagellae, where none of the
> > indigenous species had them.
>
> > 3B The panspermists had a protein translation mechanism, but a much
> > simpler one than ours and designed a much more elaborate and precise
> > one for the organisms they sent.
>
> > 3C The organisms had a radically different biochemistry, probably
> > with ribozymes as their enzymes, but also with structural proteins not
> > made to the same exacting specifications as synthetases necessarily
> > have to have. They developed a lot of proteins using nanotechnology,
> > partly to enhance their own makeup but more radically to create
> > completely new life forms with the translation mechanism we now enjoy.
>
> > I called the organisms of 3C "Throomians" in 1996-2001, in conscious
> > modification of the word "Thrymans" used by Poul Anderson in his early
> > sf novel, _We Claim These Stars_.
>
> > I didn't talk about 3B at all in those days, but I talked plenty
> > about 3A. Someone else coined a word starting with "X" for them back
> > then, but I think I'll refer to them as "Golians" this time around.
>
> > Once a technological civilization arises based on one of these, no
> > further explanation of how they spread the life around is necessary,
> > since we have capabilities for directed panspermy ourselves. I
> > mentioned them in a follow-up to el cid: Project Orion, etc.
>
> > Scenarios 3B and 3C require much more in the way of nanotechnology for
> > producing prokaryotes of the sort that exist on earth, but I don't
> > think it necessary to speculate on the steps. It is "Mother Earth did
> > it" that cries out for a path from the primitive level that origin-of-
> > life experimenters have achieved, to a full protein translation
> > mechanism such as is present in all "life as we know it."
>
> > Peter Nyikos
>
> The _real_ benefit of panspermia of course being that it places the
> origins of life firmly beyond our grasp, and even if some ancient form
> of life is ever found on some distant planet, there's no way to tell
> if that is the original planet on which life developed or if it just
> got panspermified a bit earlier.
False. If we learned of a civilization in our galaxy that arose only
one billion years after the begining of our universe, we could pretty
confidently state that it was NOT the result of seeding by an older
species.
Not with absolute certainty, of course, but certainty is not what
scientists (not counting us mathematicians) aim for, but only
hypotheses that resist numerous attempted falsifications and are
consonant with a great deal of data.
Peter Nyikos
John Harshman
Or perhaps he understands it better than you do.
> I worked from a set of premises that people are free to dispute. And
> two people have actually made the effort, and I have responded at
> length to one of them, and will respond to the other soon.
I'm not sure your premises are actually very clear. Try laying them out
again. Here's what they seem to be:
1. Life is very, very unlikely, to the extent that it probably wouldn't
happen more than once in the lifetime of a galaxy.
2. Intelligent, technological life that wants (for some unknown reason)
to seed the universe with other life is very likely, to the extent that
it is almost certain to happen if life happens at all.
It's hard to figure out how even these premises make it more likely that
we were seeded than that life originated naturally. Assuming these
premises, we are either the first type 2 life in the galaxy or we were
seeded. Now if you assume that seeding did happen, and there are
hundreds or thousands of seeded worlds, it's of course more likely that
we are one of those than that we are the original world. (Then again,
since we are obviously not the seeders, given our world, the probability
of that is near 1.) But that's begging the question. That calculation
requires the assumption of prior seeders. If you look at it more
reasonably, you have to ask the probability that we are the first world
on which there is life. I see no way to determine that probability, but
if there's only one origin of life in the galaxy, why should it be more
probable that it happened 8 billion years ago than that it happened 4
billion years ago? If you think so, show your work.
And of course there is no reason to suppose that either of the premises
is valid either. But let's keep going with them. If we're a seeded
world, surely the probability that we're the very first seeded world is
also low. So there are probably many previously seeded worlds. Some of
them should, according the premises, have come up with type 2 life
before we did, and would presumably have also seeded the galaxy. Why
didn't they seed Earth? Shouldn't we in fact have experienced multiple
invasions of alien seeders?
If the motive was colonization, that assumes a civilization confident in
having millions of years of stability. So why hasn't a single one of
those stable civilizations either colonized Earth or done anything else
that would make it detectable to us? Where are the interstellar
broadcasts, radiating Dyson Spheres, fleets of von Neumann machines, etc.?
[snip various passes of boasting and personal attack]
John Harshman
> On Dec 14, 7:26 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> That's a very bad way to compute the odds.
>
> Actually, it is mathematically airtight. Apparently your real
> complaint is that my figure of 1 tech civ in 1000 developing was
> pulled out of hat.
That's one complaint, though not the most basic one.
> And it was: it was simply adopted for illustrative
> purposes. I own an astronomy textbook, written on the university
> level in the 1990's, whose authors think 1 in 100 is a plausible lower
> bound, and 90% a plausible upper bound, for the chances of life, once
> it has begun naturally on a planet, to produce an intelligent species
> through evolution.
Surely that must depend on the time-interval chosen, even if there is
some time interval over which those numbers are reasonable.
> I see your opinion tends in the opposite direction. But even if the
> odds are 1 in 100,000, the initial assumptions favor us developing via
> panspermy, by the same reasoning. You may argue with the initial
> premises, but if you still don't follow the reasoning, I'll be glad to
> expound further.
Please do. I have, after all, requested several times that you do so.
Perhaps that happens in your followup?
[verbiage snipped]
Paul J Gans
I'm sorry. Our friend did not do a conditional calculation.
Here's a somewhat trivial example. There are 32 teams in the
National Football League. The odds on a given team winning
are at best 1 in 32. What are the odds that New Orleans will
win the Super Bowl in 2010?
Our friends answer is 1/32. My answer is 1 because New Orleans
DID win the Super Bowl in 2010.
Who is right?
John Harshman
> I'm sorry. Our friend did not do a conditional calculation.
>
> Here's a somewhat trivial example. There are 32 teams in the
> National Football League. The odds on a given team winning
> are at best 1 in 32. What are the odds that New Orleans will
> win the Super Bowl in 2010?
>
> Our friends answer is 1/32. My answer is 1 because New Orleans
> DID win the Super Bowl in 2010.
>
> Who is right?
Neither. Both are really bad analogies of the sort of thing Peter is
doing. Now of course he doesn't actually make any sort of probability
calculation. He merely does a rough guess as to what's more likely. But
it is a conditional probability, at least verbally. Given that there is
us on Earth, what's the probability that life arose here vs. the
probability that it was seeded? And in fact I think, as I explain above,
that it's an improper conditional probability, since his actual
assumption is that life was seeded on thousands of planets; given that,
it's very likely that it was seeded here.
Paul J Gans
try to do some ASCII math. Forgive me if it doesn't work.
I insist that the chance of life coming to earth from another
planet is a CONDITIONAL probability comes from the FACT that
we know that there is life on earth.
Here's the story. Forgive the lecture format. I've taught
more classes than our friend has and so it is a more ingrained
habit:
------------------------------------------
Conditional Probability is can be denoted by P(A|B) which is
the chance that B occurs GIVEN THAT A has in fact happened.
If those are the only two choices, and if those choices are
NOT independent, then the probability that both A and B happen
is P(A and B) and
P(A and B) = P(A) P(B|A)
where P(A) is the probability that A has happened.
From this
P(A and B)
P(A|B) = ----------
P(A)
Here, in very oversimplified terms, we have that
A = there is life on earth
B = life on earth came from another planet.
So we have, in words:
P(life on earth came from another planet GIVEN there is life on earth)
P(life on earth AND it came from another planet)
= ------------------------------------------------
P(life on earth)
If we assume that there is another planet with life (implied by the
simple hypothesis here) what is the chance that it can make it to
earth? I'll present the actual argument if asked, but that chance
has to be very very small given the difficulties of a multimillenia
trip through a dynamic relativistic universe.
So let me pick an arbitrary number, say 10^{-10}.
Now the probability that there is life on earth is exactly 1.0. So
we conclude that:
P(life on earth came from another planet GIVEN there is life on earth)
= 10^{-10}
which is not what the eminent mathematician has computed.
We can go further. Denote the chance that life originated on earth
GIVEN that there is life on earth by P(A|C).
If indeed those are the only two choices theniConditional Probability is can be denoted by P(A|B) which is
the chance that B occurs GIVEN THAT A has in fact happened.
If those are the only two choices, and if those choices are
NOT independent, then the probability that both A and B happen
is P(A and B) and
P(A and B) = P(A) P(B|A)
where P(A) is the probability that A has happened.
From this
P(A and B)
P(A|B) = ----------
P(A)
Here, in very oversimplified terms, we have that
A = there is life on earth
B = life on earth came from another planet.
So we have, in words:
P(life on earth came from another planet GIVEN there is life on earth)
P(life on earth AND it came from another planet)
= ------------------------------------------------
P(life on earth)
If we assume that there is another planet with life (implied by the
simple hypothesis here) what is the chance that it can make it to
earth? I'll present the actual argument if asked, but that chance
has to be very very small given the difficulties of a multimillenia
trip through a dynamic universe.
So let me pick an arbitrary number, say 10^{-10}.
Now the probability that there is life on earth is exactly 1.0. So
we conclude that:
P(life on earth came from another planet GIVEN there is life on earth)
= 10^{-10}
which is not what the eminent mathematician has computed.
We can go further. Denote the chance that life originated on earth
GIVEN that there is life on earth by P(A|C).
If indeed those are the only two choices then
P(A|B) + P(A|C) = 1
and it then follows using the numbers above that P(A|C) = 0.999999999.
Now in fact I have strongly overestimated the odds that life came
from another planet. Indeed that there is life on another planet
is ALSO a CONDITIONAL probability about which we know almost nothing.
Considering that we have explored two or three bodies on our solar
system and not found life on any other than ours, certainly
the that probability is much less than 1. But let's not go there.
This entire subject is frought with unknowables, but the math that
must be done is quite clear. A direct computation of the chances
is WRONG.
N.B. Note that the mathematician *assumed* that life could
not have arisen on earth by a computation that did not include
the fact that there IS life on earth. That's the error.
Walter Bushell
I would that your answer if I got the opportunity to bet.
I was told in probability class that the probability of a past event was
1 or 0, but that is not quite true. The (previous) existence of Socrates
is greater than 0 and less than 1; that is he could conceivably be a
totally fictional character, wether immortalized by Plato or
Aristophanes. The situation is Cloudy.
John Harshman
You have just reversed your A's and B's. And we want to compute P(B|A),
not P(A|B). Perhaps that's what you meant? Anyway, I don't think you can
use Bayes' Theorem here, since you have no independently assigned value
for P(A and B).
> Here, in very oversimplified terms, we have that
>
> A = there is life on earth
> B = life on earth came from another planet.
>
> So we have, in words:
>
> P(life on earth came from another planet GIVEN there is life on earth)
>
> P(life on earth AND it came from another planet)
> = ------------------------------------------------
> P(life on earth)
>
> If we assume that there is another planet with life (implied by the
> simple hypothesis here) what is the chance that it can make it to
> earth? I'll present the actual argument if asked, but that chance
> has to be very very small given the difficulties of a multimillenia
> trip through a dynamic universe.
>
> So let me pick an arbitrary number, say 10^{-10}.
>
> Now the probability that there is life on earth is exactly 1.0. So
> we conclude that:
>
> P(life on earth came from another planet GIVEN there is life on earth)
>
> = 10^{-10}
>
> which is not what the eminent mathematician has computed.
Two problems here. First, what Peter is really trying to determine is
not P(A|B) but P(B|A). Second, you make quite different assumptions
about the feasibility of directed panspermy than Peter does. Third, you
assume that the feasibility is the only factor in P(life came from
another planet), but that's just wrong. Easy to demonstrate: if
panspermy is as easy as Peter thinks it is, P(B|A)calculated by your
method is around 1. And of course by your calculation P(B|A) will always
equal P(B), since P(A) will always be 1. So if panspermy is easy, we are
almost certain to be the result of it; but that's silly.
> We can go further. Denote the chance that life originated on earth
> GIVEN that there is life on earth by P(A|C).
You seem to have reversed your A and B/C here. A used to mean there is
life on earth, so you should have said P(C|A).
> If indeed those are the only two choices then
>
> P(A|B) + P(A|C) = 1
>
> and it then follows using the numbers above that P(A|C) = 0.999999999.
> Now in fact I have strongly overestimated the odds that life came
> from another planet. Indeed that there is life on another planet
> is ALSO a CONDITIONAL probability about which we know almost nothing.
> Considering that we have explored two or three bodies on our solar
> system and not found life on any other than ours, certainly
> the that probability is much less than 1. But let's not go there.
Let's not, since as far as I can see you have no basis at all for
assigning any probability at all.
> This entire subject is frought with unknowables, but the math that
> must be done is quite clear. A direct computation of the chances
> is WRONG.
>
>
> N.B. Note that the mathematician *assumed* that life could
> not have arisen on earth by a computation that did not include
> the fact that there IS life on earth. That's the error.
What computation? When did Peter post a computation?
Paul J Gans
>Paul J Gans wrote:
>> I'm sorry. Our friend did not do a conditional calculation.
>>
>> Here's a somewhat trivial example. There are 32 teams in the
>> National Football League. The odds on a given team winning
>> are at best 1 in 32. What are the odds that New Orleans will
>> win the Super Bowl in 2010?
>>
>> Our friends answer is 1/32. My answer is 1 because New Orleans
>> DID win the Super Bowl in 2010.
>>
>> Who is right?
>Neither. Both are really bad analogies of the sort of thing Peter is
>doing.
I don't agree, but it isn't worth arguing about. I've a later
post that goes into more detail.
>Now of course he doesn't actually make any sort of probability
>calculation. He merely does a rough guess as to what's more likely. But
>it is a conditional probability, at least verbally. Given that there is
>us on Earth, what's the probability that life arose here vs. the
>probability that it was seeded? And in fact I think, as I explain above,
>that it's an improper conditional probability, since his actual
>assumption is that life was seeded on thousands of planets; given that,
>it's very likely that it was seeded here.
I agree that his assumption about seeding begs the question. The
difficulties with that are horrendous. Biological-type folks
here focus on the biology, and our friend's biology is bad
enough. The *physical* problems in "seeding the galaxy" are
far more enormous.
We are assuming that our friends the Xordaxians could build
something on the order of tens of billions of seed ships that
could traverse the galaxy *on their own*, find likely planets,
avoid hazards we know are out there, and successfully seed
planets whose surface conditions could not be envisioned
prior to launch.
One can estimate the needed mass of one such ship, and one
can estimate the energy needed to boost such a ship to a
speed of 0.01c (1860 miles per second) and to slow it down
as it reaches a target.
The energy required is enormous, the raw material requirements
are enormous, and the development time required is enormous.
And this gets assigned a "reasonable" probability?
Paul J Gans
I wish I knew what you meant here...
>I was told in probability class that the probability of a past event was
>1 or 0, but that is not quite true. The (previous) existence of Socrates
>is greater than 0 and less than 1; that is he could conceivably be a
>totally fictional character, wether immortalized by Plato or
>Aristophanes. The situation is Cloudy.
The probability of a past event is 1 or 0 in the case where one
can determine the outcome with certainty. You are taking
the uncertainty into account.
I am taking the probability that there is life on earth as
1 because it is known to be true. That seriously changes
the chance of life originating on earth. The calculation now
depends on the chance of the earth being seeded. Our friend
postulates that that chance is 1 if the Xordaxians exist.
Both ends of that are open to discussion.
pnyikos
In another post you claimed that it works against me, but gave no
reason; nor did anything you say later in the post begin to justify
it.
Care to try and justify it now?
> > I worked from a set of premises that people are free to dispute. And
> > two people have actually made the effort, and I have responded at
> > length to one of them, and will respond to the other soon.
>
> I'm not sure your premises are actually very clear. Try laying them out
> again. Here's what they seem to be:
>
> 1. Life is very, very unlikely, to the extent that it probably wouldn't
> happen more than once in the lifetime of a galaxy.
Yes.
> 2. Intelligent, technological life that wants (for some unknown reason)
But there are various plausible hypotheses as to reasons. I gave a
long reply about this to Mr. Camp. Did you happen to read it?
> to seed the universe with other life is very likely, to the extent that
> it is almost certain to happen if life happens at all.
Not necessarily. If chances are one in four that they will do that,
[probability 1/4 for seeding] and they seed enough to produce eight
planets with technological civilizations, then our own civilization --
or indeed any civilization -- is twice as likely to be the product of
such a seeding, than it is to be the one civilization in the galaxy
that comes from life that arose spontaneously.
The numbers are just chosen for illustrative purposes. The general
principle is this: as long as the probability of seeding, times the
expected number of technological civilizations produced is greater
than one, then any technological civilization (such as ours) is more
likely to come from being seeded than to come from life that arose
spontaneously.
> It's hard to figure out how even these premises make it more likely that
> we were seeded than that life originated naturally. Assuming these
> premises, we are either the first type 2 life in the galaxy or we were
> seeded.
Right.
> Now if you assume that seeding did happen, and there are
> hundreds or thousands of seeded worlds, it's of course more likely that
> we are one of those than that we are the original world.
That's exactly what I've been trying to explain to you. Does what I
said this time around help?
> (Then again,
> since we are obviously not the seeders, given our world,
Not now, but we could easily become one of the seeders later. If
humans send probes far and wide, and find lots of planets suitable for
life, but none with life, they might decide to undertake exactly the
project of which I write.
Please note: I don't rule out "Mother Earth did it". I just think it
less likely than earth life coming from seeding. If Mother Earth did
it, then I'd like to see some argument that abiogenesis is likely to
take place anywhere else in the universe. So far, I've seen none.
But more to the point: if we are the product of homegrown abiogenesis,
and we do NOT become seeders, it is my belief that no directed
panspermy will take place in our universe, but only in some other
universes closed off to us. And it is my very strong belief that none
will take place in our galaxy. It's up to us, or no one, because we
are the only ones that will ever be capable of it.
> the probability
> of that is near 1.) But that's begging the question.
I suspect the subtleties of the anthropic principle have escaped you.
It is a given that we are here, but that's all. It is meaningless at
this point in time to claim that "we are not the seeders."
> That calculation
> requires the assumption of prior seeders.
I'd like to see why you think that.
>If you look at it more
> reasonably, you have to ask the probability that we are the first world
> on which there is life.
That's been what I've been asking all along, in different words.
> I see no way to determine that probability, but
> if there's only one origin of life in the galaxy, why should it be more
> probable that it happened 8 billion years ago than that it happened 4
> billion years ago? If you think so, show your work.
See above. If what I am saying is true, then this last bit is a
corollary of the undeniable fact that life on earth began 4 billion
years ago, and the ballpark estimate of the panspermists needing about
4 billion years to arise.
Continued in separate reply.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> pnyikos wrote:
> > On Dec 14, 7:26 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >> That's a very bad way to compute the odds.
>
> > Actually, it is mathematically airtight. Apparently your real
> > complaint is that my figure of 1 tech civ in 1000 developing was
> > pulled out of hat.
>
> That's one complaint, though not the most basic one.
Then your complaint makes no sense to me at all. Please elucidate why
you think it's a very bad way to compute the odds.
> > And it was: it was simply adopted for illustrative
> > purposes. I own an astronomy textbook, written on the university
> > level in the 1990's,
Off by a year: it's the fourth edition, copyright 1989, of _Astronomy:
the Cosmic Journey_, by William K. Hartmann,
who thinks the following:
> > 1 in 100 is a plausible lower
> > bound, and 90% a plausible upper bound, for the chances of life, once
> > it has begun naturally on a planet, to produce an intelligent species
> > through evolution.
>
> Surely that must depend on the time-interval chosen, even if there is
> some time interval over which those numbers are reasonable.
I assume Hartmann meant "within the time the planet is in the
habitable zone." And, if some theories I've read about are correct, we
didn't have too much more time to arise: 500 million years from now --
less than the time that has elapsed since the Cambrian -- is all these
"doomsayers" give us for getting out of earth or radically altering
our way of life.
Hartmann shows (p. 624) Venus well outside the habitable zone, Earth
rather close to its inner edge, and Mars just barely within its outer
edge. That's his take on it, anyway.
> > I see your opinion tends in the opposite direction. But even if the
> > odds are 1 in 100,000, the initial assumptions favor us developing via
> > panspermy, by the same reasoning. You may argue with the initial
> > premises, but if you still don't follow the reasoning, I'll be glad to
> > expound further.
>
> Please do. I have, after all, requested several times that you do so.
I've tried to do that, over and over and over again, in response. My
latest try is the follow-up to your preceding post.
I'm not a mind reader. Please try to be more specific about where
your difficulties in understanding me lie.
For instance, I haven't the foggiest idea why you called my Scenario
3A "too short to be useful." It has to do with a civilization no more
advanced than ours, and I keep posting about Project Orion to show we
could become 3A panspermists ourselves, and you keep ignoring it.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
Only in the pedantic sense of doing a calculation and THEN doing
another calculation given an event. I assumed the event (a planet
with a technological civilization) as given, and went on from there.
In a somewhat similar way, Gans assumes the New Orleans victory below
as a given, and goes from there.
> Here's a somewhat trivial example. There are 32 teams in the
> National Football League. The odds on a given team winning
> are at best 1 in 32.
"At best" because the house rakes in some of the money wagered, I take
it. Otherwise Gans is just plain silly to put "at best".
> What are the odds that New Orleans will
> win the Super Bowl in 2010?
>
> Our friends answer is 1/32. My answer is 1 because New Orleans
> DID win the Super Bowl in 2010.
>
> Who is right?
Neither. The probability that it will win it is zero, because the
winning took place in the past, not the future.
Anyway, Gans is doing a lousy job of illustrating conditional
probability. He should stick to medieval history.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> If we're a seeded
> world, surely the probability that we're the very first seeded world is
> also low.
Oh, I suppose the panspermists seeded lots of worlds before they
seeded ours. But if they rested from their labors after a million
years, the difference hardly matters.
> So there are probably many previously seeded worlds. Some of
> them should, according the premises, have come up with type 2 life
> before we did, and would presumably have also seeded the galaxy.
Non sequitur. They would first have to know what conditions are like
elsewhere.
> Why
> didn't they seed Earth?
1. There is no prebiotic soup on Earth any more; it disappeared
billions of years ago.
2. The odds against Earth being close enough are too high. 4 billion
years is plenty of time for solar systems, once close together, to get
to opposite sides of the galaxy.
>Shouldn't we in fact have experienced multiple
> invasions of alien seeders?
No.
> If the motive was colonization, that assumes a civilization confident in
> having millions of years of stability. So why hasn't a single one of
> those stable civilizations either colonized Earth
Again, here are two reasons; given enough time, I could probably think
of more; ditto above.
1. The panspermists may have colonized lots of worlds, but Earth might
have drifted too far away from them to be worth the long journey.
2. If their intent was to escape the demise of their home planet when
their sun expanded too far, then they might have just settled for the
BEST planet, and ours isn't it.
> [snip various passes of boasting and personal attack]
You call some of what you snipped a personal attack??? Are you sure
you aren't prone to obsessive defensiveness?
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> We are assuming that our friends the Xordaxians could build
> something on the order of tens of billions of seed ships
Maybe Gans and Harshman are; I certainly am not. I said about a
million, and I think that is a reasonable estimate.
> that
> could traverse the galaxy *on their own*,
Maybe Gans and Harshman are assuming that; I am only assuming
technology more or less within our own reach. As I've said before, I
assume the panspermists (being rational creatures gifted with more
common sense than Gans seems to have), would begin with guided
instrumental probes on one-way flybys, and only try to land organisms
on the most promising planets.
> find likely planets,
> avoid hazards we know are out there, and successfully seed
> planets whose surface conditions could not be envisioned
> prior to launch.
They would be well known prior to launch. Gans is off in la-la land.
> One can estimate the needed mass of one such ship, and one
> can estimate the energy needed to boost such a ship to a
> speed of 0.01c (1860 miles per second) and to slow it down
> as it reaches a target.
>
> The energy required is enormous, the raw material requirements
> are enormous, and the development time required is enormous.
>
> And this gets assigned a "reasonable" probability?
I do believe Gans has seen my links to Project Orion and Project
Daedalus, and is gloating over the fantasy of me tearing my hair over
the way he is posting in utter defiance of them. But I've run into so
many pathological liars [I could document a few, if readers are
curious] that he looks tame in comparison--here, at any rate--and so
he merely amuses me.
For the benefit of readers who may be just tuning in here for the
first time, these are spaceships propelled by thermonuclear fusion; in
the case of Project Orion, the main propulsion is provided by plain
old ordinary hydrogen bombs.
The following website shows what it's all about [it was a serious
project of the US military for a number of years] except that the
decent thing to do is to wait until the ship is far away from the home
planet before starting to explode those bombs. Until then, patience
is called for in the way of using conventional propulsion methods.
But since there will be no passengers besides unicellular creatures,
it's really not a problem for any one panspermist.
http://www.damninteresting.com/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-atomic-spaceship
Peter Nyikos
Walter Bushell
<94c7b107-7508-4013...@l17g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>,
pnyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > Here's a somewhat trivial example. There are 32 teams in the
> > National Football League. The odds on a given team winning
> > are at best 1 in 32.
>
> "At best" because the house rakes in some of the money wagered, I take
> it. Otherwise Gans is just plain silly to put "at best".
Different teams have different probabilities of winning the Superb Owl.
The Washington Redskins have zero chance for the upcoming Superb Owl.
Even at the beginning of the season, they had little chance. New
England, New Orleans and the Eagles have chances way above 1 in 32.
Mark Isaak
Impossible. You have no odds. You have no probabilities.
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) earthlink (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 Dec 15, 10:28 pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
>> John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> >Paul J Gans wrote:
>
>> We are assuming that our friends the Xordaxians could build something
>> on the order of tens of billions of seed ships
>
> Maybe Gans and Harshman are; I certainly am not. I said about a
> million, and I think that is a reasonable estimate.
Until you can justify the expense, I'll grant one hundred as a very
generous estimate.
Do you have any reason to expect that whatever group is launching these
ships will last, as a working economic entity, for more than 50 years?
That alone seems, to me at least, more improbable than protein
transcription evolving on Earth.
Mark Isaak
> The numbers are just chosen for illustrative purposes. The general
> principle is this: as long as the probability of seeding, times the
> expected number of technological civilizations produced is greater than
> one, then any technological civilization (such as ours) is more likely
> to come from being seeded than to come from life that arose
> spontaneously.
Thank you; that is clearly stated and a good starting point for
discussion.
First, the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. I would rephrase
it as, "The general principle is this: as long as the probability of
seeding, times the expected number of technological civilizations
produced is greater than one, then any technological civilization (such
as ours) will increase exponentially." Because for all you know the
probability of life arising spontaneously on earth-like planets could be
..999, you still cannot state that seeding is more likely to produce life.
Second, you neglect the time factor. If it takes ten billion years to
get from one planet to another, it doesn't matter what all the
probabilities are; we can be confident that life had to arise here. Even
if it takes significantly less time, we can still be reasonably sure that
it will take on the order of a billion years at least to go from
technology on one planet to technology on the planet it seeds. Since the
time that the universe has had habitable planets is just a few billion
years, the exponential growth in number of civilizations has not had a
chance to show off its potential for growth.
Third, there are the initial probabilities, which you seem to be pulling
out of a different hat than others are using. But that has been
discussed ad nauseam already.
John Harshman
> On Dec 15, 6:45 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> pnyikos wrote:
>>> On Dec 14, 7:26 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>>> That's a very bad way to compute the odds.
>>> Actually, it is mathematically airtight. Apparently your real
>>> complaint is that my figure of 1 tech civ in 1000 developing was
>>> pulled out of hat.
>> That's one complaint, though not the most basic one.
>
> Then your complaint makes no sense to me at all. Please elucidate why
> you think it's a very bad way to compute the odds.
I have done so, elsewhere.
>>> And it was: it was simply adopted for illustrative
>>> purposes. I own an astronomy textbook, written on the university
>>> level in the 1990's,
>
> Off by a year: it's the fourth edition, copyright 1989, of _Astronomy:
> the Cosmic Journey_, by William K. Hartmann,
> who thinks the following:
>
>>> 1 in 100 is a plausible lower
>>> bound, and 90% a plausible upper bound, for the chances of life, once
>>> it has begun naturally on a planet, to produce an intelligent species
>>> through evolution.
>> Surely that must depend on the time-interval chosen, even if there is
>> some time interval over which those numbers are reasonable.
>
> I assume Hartmann meant "within the time the planet is in the
> habitable zone." And, if some theories I've read about are correct, we
> didn't have too much more time to arise: 500 million years from now --
> less than the time that has elapsed since the Cambrian -- is all these
> "doomsayers" give us for getting out of earth or radically altering
> our way of life.
You think that isn't a long time? It's 4% of the age of the universe. So
how long a time period do you estimate, on the average, within which
intelligent life could evolve on a planet? More importantly, how did
Hartmann get his estimates?
> Hartmann shows (p. 624) Venus well outside the habitable zone, Earth
> rather close to its inner edge, and Mars just barely within its outer
> edge. That's his take on it, anyway.
>>> I see your opinion tends in the opposite direction. But even if the
>>> odds are 1 in 100,000, the initial assumptions favor us developing via
>>> panspermy, by the same reasoning. You may argue with the initial
>>> premises, but if you still don't follow the reasoning, I'll be glad to
>>> expound further.
>> Please do. I have, after all, requested several times that you do so.
>
> I've tried to do that, over and over and over again, in response. My
> latest try is the follow-up to your preceding post.
>
> I'm not a mind reader. Please try to be more specific about where
> your difficulties in understanding me lie.
>
> For instance, I haven't the foggiest idea why you called my Scenario
> 3A "too short to be useful." It has to do with a civilization no more
> advanced than ours, and I keep posting about Project Orion to show we
> could become 3A panspermists ourselves, and you keep ignoring it.
We could, but why? The expense is huge, and the return is very far in
the future, if ever. The figure given for velocity is about 3% of light
speed. If you want to get out to 1000 light years (wasn't that your
figure?), a single flight would take 30,000 years. What civilization
operates on that time scale? One ship was estimated to take 10% of U.S.
GDP. Who has that kind of money to waste?
John Harshman
> On Dec 15, 6:41 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>> If we're a seeded
>> world, surely the probability that we're the very first seeded world is
>> also low.
>
> Oh, I suppose the panspermists seeded lots of worlds before they
> seeded ours. But if they rested from their labors after a million
> years, the difference hardly matters.
What civilization last a million years? But sure, the period during
which they seeded would likely be short. However, the variance on time
for seeded worlds to give rise to intelligent species must be on the
order of billions of years, and even a difference of a million years is
significant. So again, we would be unlikely to be the first.
>> So there are probably many previously seeded worlds. Some of
>> them should, according the premises, have come up with type 2 life
>> before we did, and would presumably have also seeded the galaxy.
>
> Non sequitur. They would first have to know what conditions are like
> elsewhere.
What do you mean? Why would they behave any differently from the initial
seeders?
>> Why
>> didn't they seed Earth?
>
> 1. There is no prebiotic soup on Earth any more; it disappeared
> billions of years ago.
Isn't actual life a much better condition for seeding than any prebiotic
soup? That actually argues against your claim rather than for it.
> 2. The odds against Earth being close enough are too high. 4 billion
> years is plenty of time for solar systems, once close together, to get
> to opposite sides of the galaxy.
It's also plenty of time for life to completely fill the galaxy in
multiple seeding steps.
>> Shouldn't we in fact have experienced multiple
>> invasions of alien seeders?
>
> No.
Why not? Doesn't this depend on intelligent life being a very unlikely
result of seeding?
>> If the motive was colonization, that assumes a civilization confident in
>> having millions of years of stability. So why hasn't a single one of
>> those stable civilizations either colonized Earth
>
> Again, here are two reasons; given enough time, I could probably think
> of more; ditto above.
>
> 1. The panspermists may have colonized lots of worlds, but Earth might
> have drifted too far away from them to be worth the long journey.
Here you're confusing your time scales. Colonization would have happened
on a scale of thousands to a few millions of years, at most. Earth
doesn't drift much in that interval.
> 2. If their intent was to escape the demise of their home planet when
> their sun expanded too far, then they might have just settled for the
> BEST planet, and ours isn't it.
Why pick only one? In fact, wouldn't such a civilization tend to spread
throughout the galaxy? Given that they started 4 billion years ago, they
could have filled up the whole place in only a few million years, and we
would never have existed.
John Harshman
I would prefer if you justified your claim first. But really, all the
anthropic principle says is that we observe conditions conducive to life
because if there weren't such conditions we wouldn't be there to observe
them. In general, it argues against any inferences of design based on
improbability. It doesn't necessarily destroy those inferences, but it
makes them less forceful.
>>> I worked from a set of premises that people are free to dispute. And
>>> two people have actually made the effort, and I have responded at
>>> length to one of them, and will respond to the other soon.
>> I'm not sure your premises are actually very clear. Try laying them out
>> again. Here's what they seem to be:
>>
>> 1. Life is very, very unlikely, to the extent that it probably wouldn't
>> happen more than once in the lifetime of a galaxy.
>
> Yes.
>
>> 2. Intelligent, technological life that wants (for some unknown reason)
>
> But there are various plausible hypotheses as to reasons. I gave a
> long reply about this to Mr. Camp. Did you happen to read it?
I don't find your reasons especially plausible based on human motives.
Of course you could posit aliens with whatever motives you like.
>> to seed the universe with other life is very likely, to the extent that
>> it is almost certain to happen if life happens at all.
>
> Not necessarily. If chances are one in four that they will do that,
> [probability 1/4 for seeding] and they seed enough to produce eight
> planets with technological civilizations, then our own civilization --
> or indeed any civilization -- is twice as likely to be the product of
> such a seeding, than it is to be the one civilization in the galaxy
> that comes from life that arose spontaneously.
I think this is very bad reasoning. It requires the prior assumption
that there was indeed a seeder that wasn't us. If the seeder doesn't
exist, your 8 planets don't exist either. You're creating a conditional
probability that assumes your conclusion.
> The numbers are just chosen for illustrative purposes. The general
> principle is this: as long as the probability of seeding, times the
> expected number of technological civilizations produced is greater
> than one, then any technological civilization (such as ours) is more
> likely to come from being seeded than to come from life that arose
> spontaneously.
What do you mean by "probability of seeding"? I think your main fallacy
may lurk in that definition.
Let's look at it in another way. If only one instance of life is likely
to arise during the existence of a galaxy, is it more likely to have
happened early in that galaxy's existence or later? The probability that
we are indeed the very first instance of life seems very high based on
your initial assumption.
>> It's hard to figure out how even these premises make it more likely that
>> we were seeded than that life originated naturally. Assuming these
>> premises, we are either the first type 2 life in the galaxy or we were
>> seeded.
>
> Right.
>
>
>> Now if you assume that seeding did happen, and there are
>> hundreds or thousands of seeded worlds, it's of course more likely that
>> we are one of those than that we are the original world.
>
> That's exactly what I've been trying to explain to you. Does what I
> said this time around help?
No. It's a calculation that assumes that we are not the first life.
That's begging the question.
>> (Then again,
>> since we are obviously not the seeders, given our world,
>
> Not now, but we could easily become one of the seeders later.
Not relevant to the problem.
> If
> humans send probes far and wide, and find lots of planets suitable for
> life, but none with life, they might decide to undertake exactly the
> project of which I write.
I see no prospect of that. What might happen is the attempt to terraform
a certain number of particular worlds with the goal of colonization. But
millions of worlds with no intent to ever do anything with them? There's
just no payoff for that. Humans wouldn't do it.
> Please note: I don't rule out "Mother Earth did it". I just think it
> less likely than earth life coming from seeding. If Mother Earth did
> it, then I'd like to see some argument that abiogenesis is likely to
> take place anywhere else in the universe. So far, I've seen none.
Why is that relevant? If life arose here, it could be because this is
the one place in which that unlikely event happened, based on your own
probability estimate. If life is common, so much the better.
> But more to the point: if we are the product of homegrown abiogenesis,
> and we do NOT become seeders, it is my belief that no directed
> panspermy will take place in our universe, but only in some other
> universes closed off to us. And it is my very strong belief that none
> will take place in our galaxy. It's up to us, or no one, because we
> are the only ones that will ever be capable of it.
If your assumptions are correct, that's certainly true. But what is the
relevance of that point? If we do it, we do it. If we don't, we don't. I
can't see any point to it myself. Is this perhaps a religiously inspired
goal for you? Are you trying to be fruitful and multiply?
>> the probability
>> of that is near 1.) But that's begging the question.
>
> I suspect the subtleties of the anthropic principle have escaped you.
> It is a given that we are here, but that's all. It is meaningless at
> this point in time to claim that "we are not the seeders."
I wish you would explain the particular subtleties of the anthropic
principle that advance your argument, because I am indeed missing them,
if they exist.
It is meaningful to claim that we are not the seeders, because we're
trying to explain the current state of the universe, not some future state.
>> That calculation
>> requires the assumption of prior seeders.
>
> I'd like to see why you think that.
Because if there are no prior seeders, there are no 8 or a million or
however many worlds that we could be one of. There's just us. Assuming
the prior seeders is assuming your conclusion.
>> If you look at it more
>> reasonably, you have to ask the probability that we are the first world
>> on which there is life.
>
> That's been what I've been asking all along, in different words.
No, you haven't been asking that. What you are really asking is given
that we are not the first life, and given that life will seed many
worlds, what is the probability that we arose independently.
>> I see no way to determine that probability, but
>> if there's only one origin of life in the galaxy, why should it be more
>> probable that it happened 8 billion years ago than that it happened 4
>> billion years ago? If you think so, show your work.
>
> See above.
There is no argument above relevant to this question.
> If what I am saying is true, then this last bit is a
> corollary of the undeniable fact that life on earth began 4 billion
> years ago, and the ballpark estimate of the panspermists needing about
> 4 billion years to arise.
I really don't understand that last sentence. Does it really mean that
it's more probable that life began 8 billion years ago iff we assume
that earth was seeded? But that's the question we're supposedly trying
to ask. You can't make that assumption.
Again: if life is so improbable that its mean occurrence is once in the
existence of a galaxy, is it more probable that the single event would
happen 8 billion years ago than that it would happen 4 billion years ago
(in which latter case, it's us)? If your answer is "yes", please show
your work.