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To: DelphiUser
>> But whatever happens to them & their descendants, the 2LoT says they'll all need to eat to survive.

Forget the eating thing, that's a Micro point and I'm talking Macro. lets look at the big picture.

Translation: "Forget that 2nd law of Thermodynamics thing that I had said before." Understood. Completely.

The Fallacy is that mutations can account for "Rust turning into Bicycles".

And the people who claim that "rust turns into bicycles" would be...?

I took a Book (If memory serves) called "Statistics and Evolution a practical approach" and used the calculations (By a scientist who believed evolution by the way) and built a calculation based on the number of mutations necessary to go from a paramecium, to a human, the book also had odds of a mutation being beneficial, dominant, non fatal, useful, all sorts of good stuff. I programmed this into three mainframe computers (hey they were the biggest, and best I could get to in those days)

3 Mainframe computers couldn't handle large numbers, eh? That would place your experiment at least 30 years ago I'd say. So, how many genes did you assume for the paramecium & for humans? What kinds of mutation did you allow in your calculations? Duplications, for instance? And did you allow for the fact that a modern paramecium is just as far removed from the last common ancestor as humans are? How many mutations did you assume could exist simultaneously in the respective populations? IOW, did you know that each human on Earth has something like 3 mutations in our DNA which our parents don't have?

Seriously, It'd be fascinating to see your work if you still have the printouts & source code.

and ran the program, crashed all three of them trying to figure the odds of that happening "Naturally"

Don't you hate when that happens? Yep, I bet they started smoking too, and their lights kept a'blinkin faster & brighter, and the line printer started spitting out paper & bouncing up and down, and it started emitting a startling stream of beeps & blips & screeches, and the technicians all started running out of the building in terror!

That happened on The Prisoner when Number 6 stumped the prison's brand new supercomputer by typing in "W-H-Y". And IIRC there was a Tarzan episode like that, too. And of course who could forget the classic Desk Set! ;-)

251 posted on 03/21/2005 3:21:31 PM PST by jennyp (WHAT I'M READING NOW: my post)
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To: jennyp
>> Translation: "Forget that 2nd law of Thermodynamics thing that I had said before." Understood. Completely

Can I translate what you say? (I'll have more fun :-D)

I was ALWAYS applying the 2LoT to the whole earth, you want to talk about eating... Boy, you are big on food (Pun intended) aren't you, food has nothing to do with it, you are the one who started down this eating path (Disorder?)

>> That would place your experiment at least 30 years ago I'd say.

30 Years?, no just 20 or so. The point being that if three mainframes can't handle the odds against it happening, It probably didn't happen (and truth be told I was a student, my code could have been the problem, but the debug looked good to me)

lets just say it's a bigger long shot than say the the number of stars in the Universe to one (1,124,000,727,777,607,680,000)

As for the source, the source code is long gone, so is the book, (I had late fees as it was)

>> I bet they started smoking too, and their lights kept a'blinkin faster & brighter...

Actually when mainframes crash, nothing happens except that all the drives shut down, and it gets relatively quiet in the big cold room. (Not nearly as exciting as your imagination sorry)

I guess you believe in a truly statistical universe?
In a truly statistical universe, everything possible must happen. - Unknown
252 posted on 03/21/2005 6:24:08 PM PST by DelphiUser ("You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think")
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