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To: tortoise
Let's say it's highly improbable, but not *impossible*, for the monkeys to type out the first sentence of Hamlet, given enough time and monkeys. And let's say it's not *impossible* that certain ammino acids came together to form the bases of life, given the random environmental soup needed.

With that in mind, how *possible* is it for those monkeys to finish the entire play? Or how possible is it for those primordial organisms to evolve into the thousands of Earth species WITHOUT design?

I'm probably over my head here, but it would seem to me that simple results may occur with the right circumstances. More complex results may indeed be an impossibility, especially since life on Earth is believed to have originated in a finite amount of time.

330 posted on 03/04/2002 11:02:38 PM PST by A Navy Vet
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To: A Navy Vet
With that in mind, how *possible* is it for those monkeys to finish the entire play? Or how possible is it for those primordial organisms to evolve into the thousands of Earth species WITHOUT design?

The million monkey theorem and bootstrapping chemistry use very different mathematics for calculating their probability. Not making this distinction is a common fallacy I see used in these arguments. In chemistry, the chemical interactions are not at all random in a mathematical sense, and if they were we wouldn't be able to produce complex chemicals reliably or in quantity. In chemistry, it is very possible to have simple chemical systems spontaneously bootstrap themselves to levels of complexity orders of magnitude greater than when they started. If chemistry was actually mathematically random, then the probability would be vanishingly small that such molecules would spontaneously assemble, never mind do it every time in quantity.

341 posted on 03/05/2002 7:28:52 AM PST by tortoise
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