A Tiny Mathematical Proof Against Evolution [AKA - Million Monkeys Can't Type Shakespeare]

Nutters.org ^ | 13-Dec-1995 | Brett Watson

[Southack]

There is a recurring claim among a certain group which goes along the lines of "software programs can self-form on their own if you leave enough computers on long enough" or "DNA will self-form given enough time" or even that a million monkeys typing randomly on a million keyboards for a million years will eventually produce the collected works of Shakespeare.

This mathematical proof goes a short distance toward showing in math what Nobel Prize winner Illya Prigogine first said in 1987 (see Order Out of Chaos), that the maximum possible "order" self-forming randomly in any system is the most improbable.

This particular math proof deals with the organized data in only the very first sentence of Hamlet self-forming. After one examines this proof, it should be readily apparent that even more complex forms of order, such as a short story, computer program, or DNA for a fox, are vastly more improbable.

So without further adue, here's the math:

[Doctor Stochastic]

The DNA is identical whether the organism is dead of alive. DNA may also be removed from a living organism and stored in vitro (perhaps for forensic reasons.) You may decide that such DNA is different from that of the living organism if you wish; you would be in famous company.

[Southack]

"The DNA is identical whether the organism is dead of alive."

Does natural selection explain how DNA becomes animated?

[MEGoody]

In your post 451, you seem to be arguing that, since ID has changed its claims, it is an invalid concept. I hope you don't mean that, because the theory of evolution has changed pretty frequently as well.

[Dan Day]

So you're saying this accident called evolution somehow learned from its mistakes?

Only in the sense that its mistakes get weeded out, and thus its successes accumulate, providing a "step up" for the next cycle of trial and error.

[Southack]

"Only in the sense that its mistakes get weeded out, and thus its successes accumulate, providing a "step up" for the next cycle of trial and error."

And what would that process look like for the formation of the very first functional DNA strand?

[Dan Day]

I have found that believers in evolution HATE numbers.

No, just bogus calculations.

The universe, as incrediably vast as it is, is FAR to brief and tiny for life to have arisen by chance.

Ok, where are *your* numbers to support this claim? And don't point to the original post, it's full of errors, unsupported presumptions, and overestimations.

You DO NOT have an infinite number to work with. The numbers you have are huge, but are as nothing compared to the scope of the problem.

You want numbers? Check this out: Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations

Also read Borel's Law and the Origin of Many Creationist Probability Assertions

As for the crowd who insists "but it is not random, their are rules", I say this- If rules, then a Rulemaker.

I seem to have missed the place where you proved this assertion. Feel free to expand on it. Especially, be sure to define "rules" in a rigorous fashion, and make a distinction between "fundamental rules" and "emergent rules". I'll wait.

And if the Rules say that new Phylums, classes, orders and families can arise by chance, then we should be able to create new versions of these things BY generating those chances (inducing mutations under (intelligent in this case) selection pressure).

Speaking of numbers, Ahban, you "forgot" to look at a few before you made this pronouncement.

It takes nature at least several million generations to produce new Orders, etc., using populations on the order of hundreds of millions as grist for the mutation grindstone.

While we seldom have populations that large to work with, we could perhaps improve a bit on the overall speed with careful selection and breeding. Even if we could speed up evolution tenfold -- and that might be a stretch -- it would still take us at the very least 100,000 generations of animal husbandry to produce something as different from the original stock as a new Family, much less Order, Phylum, etc.

So when you say:

We can't, so if there are rules, one of them seems to be that their are limits to the amount of change that can be produced by chance mutations and selctions pressures.

Yeah, the "limits" are the amount of time humans have been actively breeding animals. You're making a huge mistake when you confuse our limits within historical times to that of all of nature across geological time.

Nature has been at it over 100,000 times as much time as we have, and uses the entire planet as her laboratory, compared to just a relative handful of human breeders intermittently over the past few centuries.

Don't complain about numbers when you apparently haven't bothered to check any yourself.

[Southack]

"And don't point to the original post, it's full of errors, unsupported presumptions, and overestimations."

And yet, you can't show them...

[Dan Day]

"See the difference? Feedback rings a bell maybe?"

"Feedback" implies intelligent intervention into the process.

No, it very most certainly does not.

[Southack]

"No, it very most certainly does not."

Nonsense! Of course "feedback" implies intelligence. If the monkeys in the math simile for this thread are compelled to read a dictionary and select their output based upon its "fitness", then you have injected intelligence into the math proof both with the dictionary (which takes intelligence to compile) as well as with the monkeys (who would have to determine what part of their output is to be kept and built upon with future keystrokes).

You did read the post #100, its predecessors, and its replies, didn't you?

Well, at least read post #444. You are recovering old, long disproven ground in this thread.

[Dan Day]

How many DNA codons would we expect to see in the simplist known gene? Since we know that there are only four DNA codons (also called "letters" on this thread), we can calculate the precise probability / improbability of the natural, unaided self-formation of the data for a single gene once we agree upon how many codons are in a gene.

And what mathematical calculation do you plan to use to arrive at this probability? If you were going to say "(1/4)^N", you're wrong.

And then we can watch Evolutionists go either ballistic or into denial at said number.

Or we can explain to you why your attempted mathematical analysis is on par with a grade-school approach to the real problem.

Such is the impact math has...

To have an impact, math first has to be correct, based on a full understanding of the problem being modeled.

[Retiredforever]

Great article! It is easy to understand. Don't let your critics get you down. Most evolutionists that I have known cannot accept that there may be a being (God) with an intelligence far above their own. To admit that they were created by a higher power is just too much for them to swallow -- hence they do their very best to explain the existance of life on this planet.

I haven't yet heard an explanation from them on where the stuff was before the "Big Bang". In addition to the existance of material things, I have yet to hear an explanation of the origin of such things as human emotion, instinct, etc. Is is obvious that we are insignificant compared to the vastness of our creator - but the evolutionists will have to wait until the end of time to find out the truth.

[Dan Day]

A gene is either functional or not functional. In the example above until the entire sentence is written, the gene is not functional. Therefore, until the correct gene sequence is found for the new function, the individual(s) possessing the incipient new gene, do not derive any benefit from it and perhaps may suffer harm from it (ie it may be dysfunctional before it is correctly coded). Therefore there is no reevaluation, no feedback possible.

You are incorrect, on many levels, but the primary one is that you presume that there are no "stepping stone" states, whereby the intermediate gene is more useful the original, but not as useful as the final one.

When you speak of the "correct" gene, you betray a very simplistic view of the actual situation. It's not just a matter of "right/wrong", "working/not-working", "functional/broken".

One anti-evolutionist tried to argue that bats couldn't possibly have gotten their exquisite sonar system via evolution, because, he claimed, a partially working sonar system was useless. This is ridiculous, a bad sonar system is clearly better than none at all for a flying animal.

[Southack]

How many DNA codons would we expect to see in the simplist known gene? Since we know that there are only four DNA codons (also called "letters" on this thread), we can calculate the precise probability / improbability of the natural, unaided self-formation of the data for a single gene once we agree upon how many codons are in a gene. - Southack

"And what mathematical calculation do you plan to use to arrive at this probability? If you were going to say "(1/4)^N", you're wrong."

I'm fine with you inventing a strawman calculation that I never wrote, only to "knock it down" yourself, if you will at least post your own calculation for the probability in question.

What is your calculation?

You do have one, right??

[Dan Day]

"Without knowing the history of earth in detail, anything said about the probabilities of this happening is speculation."

That's incorrect. The specific math involved in calculating probabilities is not speculation.

But for pete's sake, you can't calculate a valid probability at all until you have a good idea what sort of process you're attempting to mathematically model.

Thus his point.

[Southack]

"you presume that there are no "stepping stone" states, whereby the intermediate gene is more useful the original, but not as useful as the final one."

Is there a single tangible, incontravertible example of such an intermediate gene in all of science?

Also, how do you explain the existence/non-existence of incomplete genes?

[Southack]

"But for pete's sake, you can't calculate a valid probability at all until you have a good idea what sort of process you're attempting to mathematically model. Thus his point."

And you'll find that the math in question for this thread DOES have a good sort of idea for the process that it is modelling, thus my retort to his point...

[Dan Day]

"And don't point to the original post, it's full of errors, unsupported presumptions, and overestimations."

And yet, you can't show them...

Sure I can, son. But first I'll have to become convinced that it's worth my time to do so. That is, that you'll have any idea what I'm talking about, and that you're intellectually honest enough to accept when you're wrong.

From looking over this thread, I'm not encouraged.

[Southack]

Either you can show the errors (that you ALREADY claimed exist) in the math for this thread, or else you can't.

Nor is it a matter of time, because taking you at your word means that you've already spotted the errors.

Thus, if you don't show those specific errors, it can only mean that you weren't being honest.

[Dan Day]

"Only in the sense that its mistakes get weeded out, and thus its successes accumulate, providing a "step up" for the next cycle of trial and error."

And what would that process look like for the formation of the very first functional DNA strand?

The nature of your question reveals your ignorance of this topic, which is odd in that you aren't at all shy about making lofty pronouncements and ironclad conclusions about it.

First, I was clearly talking about evolutionary processes (in response to a person who asked about evolution). These are different processes than those which formed the first replicator (evolution by definition is what happens *after* there is a replicator).

As for the first replicator, you're way behind on your homework if you think it was likely a "DNA strand".

For a quick overview on some likely pathways (and odds) of abiogensis, see: Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations . For extra credit, read the references. See especially:

RNA-catalysed nucleotide synthesis.
Selection of RNA amide synthases.
Emergence of symbiosis in peptide self-replication through a hypercyclic network.
Autocatalytic networks: the transition from molecular self-replication to molecular ecosystems.
Emergence of a Replicating Species from an in vitro RNA Evolution Reaction
The Hypercycle: A Principle of Natural Self Organization

Once you've caught up on this brief overview of the literature on this topic, do get back to us.

[Southack]

And what would that process look like for the formation of the very first functional DNA strand? - Southack

"First, I was clearly talking about evolutionary processes (in response to a person who asked about evolution). These are different processes than those which formed the first replicator (evolution by definition is what happens *after* there is a replicator)."

No, the difference isn't clear at all. Abiogenesis is merely the most clearcut and easiest to understand example, but ANY formation of DNA into a valid gene brings up the perfectly valid question of whether it was formed due to unaided natural (sometimes referred to as "random", but the use of that term is too easily obfuscated to be useful for a combative thread) processes or else formed from intelligent intervention.

The reply in question, however, was dealing with a claim that "feedback" could be used to explain the natural formation of useful data, with a specific, easy to understand example being brought out to bring that claim's validity into clear view (i.e. the aforementioned abiogenesis).