Posted on 09/29/2007 6:12:27 PM PDT by Tahts-a-dats-ago
You obviously have an intense rectal itch about something.
***Wow, we really do lose our privacy on the internet. Quit peeping.
SETI based their assumptions on the Drake equation. Anyone following this thread can go to that URL and plug in their own assumptions.
http://www.msnbc.com/modules/drake/default.asp
Putting in the most optimistic assumptions on all the other fields won’t even come close to overcoming the 10^100 or 10^700 or 10^50 figure. Since our disagreement is over what should go in #4, just let us know what you put in all the other fields and we’ll start from there.
If you were capable of reading you would have noticed that I started this discussion by stipulating the Drake equation requires information that we do not have. Scratching your itch doesn’t supply the information.
I am curious why a self-proclaimed conservative is so deeply upset about private citizens donating time and money to a research project that may not realize its goal, but which produces useful raw data, and which develops technology useful in national defence.
The development of instrumentation and software for detection and isolation of faint signals is valuable in both commercial and military applications. The search for extraterrestrial signals requires elimination of signal sources of earthly origin. Some of these signals have military significance, and would be missed by a less intense search.
It is interesting to compare SETI, which has produced arrays of useful technologies, with Intelligent Design, which has promised to produce a mathematical filter to detect design, but which has no commercial or military users. If Dembski’s explanatory filter actually worked, it would be worth billions of dollars in the field of signal processing and have vast implication for cryptography.
It is interesting to compare SETI, which has produced arrays of useful technologies, with Intelligent Design, which has promised to produce a mathematical filter to detect design, but which has no commercial or military users. If Dembski’s explanatory filter actually worked, it would be worth billions of dollars in the field of signal processing and have vast implication for cryptography.
I think your first paragraph is answered by your next one.
Creationists/IDers are ragging on SETI because they think they can get some mileage out of the "intelligent design" analogy. And because it is mentioned in the creationist text Of Pandas and People.
Here is a review that may be of interest:
If you were capable of reading
***Obviously I am. But you don’t seem to be able to pass up a chance at an insult. Keep up the good work.
you would have noticed that I started this discussion by stipulating the Drake equation requires information that we do not have.
***Then the SETI guys had no business inputting that information in order to get the money. And, now that they’ve been at it for awhile, they owe it to us to follow good science. As I stated, good science would compel these guys to update their original assumptions.
I am curious why a self-proclaimed conservative is so deeply upset
***This ain’t deeply upset. This is me trying to get you to input the information into the Drake Equation. In the name of Good Science.
about private citizens
***IIRC, the SETI project did ask for and receive public monies. I don’t care that much about private citizens supporting a pseudoscience. If anything, it’s the evolutionist guys who usually get bent out of shape that creationism is a pseudoscience. So what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If those guys don’t like pseudoscience, they should be keying up on the SETI project.
donating time and money to a research project that may not realize its goal, but which produces useful raw data, and which develops technology useful in national defence
***blah blah blah, yah it sounds good, if they’re developing useful info.
The development of instrumentation and software for detection and isolation of faint signals is valuable in both commercial and military applications.
***Agreed. If it were a real science, they’d update their variables for the Drake equation.
The search for extraterrestrial signals requires elimination of signal sources of earthly origin. Some of these signals have military significance, and would be missed by a less intense search.
***Interesting.
It is interesting to compare SETI, which has produced arrays of useful technologies,
***Go ahead. Let us all know. I’m interested.
with Intelligent Design, which has promised to produce a mathematical filter to detect design, but which has no commercial or military users.
***First I’ve heard of it. The comparison with ID is apt. Here’s something I posted a while back.
There is a triangulation going on here. Many people will read through threads like this and decide for themselves. I notice that evolutionists seem to have a lot of scorn for people who aren’t experts in their particular field, but when they run up against folks who are experts, the dialog tends to evolve into one of those finer point discussions similar to theologists who discuss how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Such digressive discussion furthers my point that science is becoming a religion. That’s the first part of this inductive triangle. The second part is the science that was relied upon for getting federal dollars so that we could do the SETI program. When renowned scientists such as Stephen Hawking start acknowledging that the odds against abiogenesis are astronomical, it makes your average conservative look askance at the money being spent on SETI. The third part of this triangle is in the evolution/creation debate, which is full of acrimony. I don’t have time to get into it for now, just lurking on that one for the time being, but I do think that eventually some baseline data will be agreed to by both sides. It’s the baseline data inside the inductive triangle that I’m interested in. Why some of the supposed Creation science literature is worth considering when tax dollars are at stake but it isn’t worth considering when something else is at stake.
If Dembski’s explanatory filter actually worked, it would be worth billions of dollars in the field of signal processing and have vast implication for cryptography.
***Okie dokie.
Creationists/IDers are ragging on SETI because they think they can get some mileage out of the “intelligent design” analogy.
***I don’t know why others are ragging on SETI, I’ve stated my reasons. If the evo crowd are such good scientists, then they’ll chase down some good science. But in the last few days I have been called “psychotic” for relying on the historicity of the best attested event in history. That ain’t good science. Here’s another area where I see some bad science.
Would you prefer stupid to psychotic? I'm just looking for the best fit. You obviously aren't ignorant.
You didn't exactly attract a swarm of defenders to your claim that the biographical details of Jesus' life (whichever details you choose) are better attested than the presidency of John Adams.
Would you prefer stupid to psychotic? I’m just looking for the best fit. You obviously aren’t ignorant.
***I’ve been called all 3. Pick your poison. The more you operate outside of the inductive triangle, the more convincing is the case within the triangle. You seem more interested in finding the right insult than in getting to the facts, the science behind matters. In that respect, you still have no regard for science.
You didn’t exactly attract a swarm of defenders to your claim that the biographical details of Jesus’ life (whichever details you choose) are better attested than the presidency of John Adams.
***There you go again, with the straw argumentation. But as I said to you on that thread on that subject, I’m done with you. If someone else wants to take on the historicity issue I mentioned, that would be a different thing altogether. But you didn’t exactly attract a swarm of defenders yourself.
Yes, this is the generally accepted rule for mathematical impossibility. Ergo, if js1138 accepts the number 1700 (or 10700??? Where did these numbers come from???) as the probability that life emerged without an "intervention" to make it occur, then effectively he is accepting the idea that at its origin, life got a "boost" from an intelligent agent, or Creator.
In his article Manzi explained a very simple example of a genetic algorithm applied in a factory setting with 100 different inputs (or switches), the proper coordination of which would optimize factory output. So the task is to find the correct combination, sequence, and coordination of the hundred switches. Given a switch is either "on" or "off," this means that the combinatorial probability space of the optimization problem is 2100 -- a 2 with a hundred zeros after it -- which as Manzi points out is a number larger than the total number of grains of sand on the earth. This is just to point out the astronomical size of the numbers that you and js1138 are discussing.
I looked at the Drake equation page, and saw the little test. It seemed absurd to me -- each and every answer can only be a conjecture, for there's just so much we do not know about our universe. But the fact that someone would propose a test like this as constituting some kind of legitimate determination of the probability of extraterrestrial intelligent life to me just indicates how desperate some people are to believe there is such a thing.
The fact is we really don't know. Seemingly no one's been communicating with us humans so far.... Or if they are, they are using communication forms that are undetectable by us (so far).
On the other hand, perhaps there is life out there which is not, like us, carbon-based life.
So many, many questions and so little basis on which to answer them. So I'm glad to hear that the U.S. taxpayer is not being tapped to fund SETI research. Though it would not trouble me in the least to learn that a vast amount of private investment is dedicated to this purpose.
Thanks so much for writing, Kevmo!
The "1720" - as I recall – was a term used by long gone Freeper gore3000. It was obviously an error on his part but the “evo” side of the debate quoted it without mercy to ridicule everyone else on the crevo threads.
In probability theory, the observer is always part of the observation. Therefore, IMHO, one should approach such determinations with a generous helping of salt.
Using combinatorics to evaluate the probability of biological life emerging spontaneously from non-life in nature will invariably lead to the conclusion that it is impossible. Here is another example from Gerald Schroeder.
Bayesian probability attempts to cure the problems of combinatorics – but the method itself is subjective per se as betty boop’s recent article shows here.
In that regard, the term “probability” is very much like the term “randomness.” Which is to say, we cannot say something is random in the system when we don’t know what the system is.
Likewise, when we say a thing is such and such a percent probable – it should not stand without a footnote as to how that determination was made, i.e. the system and method.
Concerning Manzi’s algorithm (as would be true with other forms of mathematical modeling) – the proof is in the pudding. If the algorithm improves efficiency, productivity, revenue, etc. then it is effective though not necessarily “true.”
Likewise stochastic methods used in quantum physics. The math is effective but does not necessarily represent “truth” because the system is not and can never be fully “known.”
And in looking at the probability of life from non-life with the method and math of Schroeder or Yockey, etc. the answer is negative. But I’m sure there are mathematicians at Santa Fe who would counter with other methods, most notably self-organizing complexity.
And for Christians and Jews, when God speaks, it is 100% certain (read probable) it is.
Thanks for 'splaining where the wild numbers came from, A-G! I didn't have a clue, nor any clue to their relevance to this discussion....
WRT the above italics: Good Luck to the Santa Fe group -- they have a tough row to hoe: How to account for the astronomical increase of information associated with living organisms, assuming they arise abiogenetically from inorganic materials, which possess very low rates of information, and seemingly no ability to generate "genetic algorithms" (e.g., a "guide to the system")....
Thank you so much for your excellent observations, dearest sister in Christ!
All of the articles I have read thus far on self-organizing systems wrt abiogenesis have been unable to explain the rise of syntax and autonomy - even taking information as a cosmic "given" (source unknown).
Also, as you have mentioned - even with self-organizing systems (and cellular automata btw) - there are always "guides" to the system.
Order cannot rise spontaneously from an unguided physical system. Period.
The lack of mercy was due to the unwillingness of the poster to admit errors. Everyone makes typos. Some people make errors of meaning, such as asserting that a circle is not an ellipse, and then refuse to admit the error. Some people have even been known to incorrectly attribute quotations and refuse for weeks at a time to admit that the attribution is false.
He correctly notes that the biological fitness landscape changes constantly. Hence the inability to predict the direction of evolution. What he fails to acknowledge is that biological evolution operates on existing and nearly optimized systems, and point mutations are seldom sufficient to crash the system for an individual.
To continue with his factory analogy, a typical mutation might cause a fraction of a percent change in efficiency. Of course it is possible for a mutation to be fatal -- something that happens in biology -- but unlike the factory simulation, the species doesn't die when one individual is defective.
So how do the biological factories survive before reaching a nearly optimal state? The same way real factories survive in the absence of competition. When you are the first and only producer, optimization is not so critical. We see this all the time with new inventions. Before there is competition, products and methods of production tend to be primitive.
At the molecular level we already know that both self replication and Darwinian evolution can occur in the absence of cell membranes or "living" cells. Check out the Spiegelman_Monster. The gaps are getting narrower. Good luck finding new ones.
Across the board, the greater interest is in the information content, e.g. Yockey, the Wimmer experiment, Spiegelman_Monster -- either its origin or evolution.
Because Spiegelman - as with Wimmer - began with information content (RNA) as a "given" - their results are not remarkable, at least to me.
Rocha, Kaufman, et al are much more interesting.
Thanks for the link! More later...
Take a look at the whole site while you are at it.
LOLOL!!!!! Ganti? Add his name to a distinguished list of Hungarian physicists who have explored and are exploring the thorniest issues in biology, including: Von Neumann, Bauer, Szent-Gyorgy, Polanyi, Szathmary, and two Grandpierres.... :^)
Oh happy day, js1138 found that link interesting!
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