Posted on 03/05/2002 9:45:44 PM PST by Southack
This is part two of the famous "Million Monkeys Typing On Keyboards for a Million Years Could Produce The Works of Shakespeare" - Debunked Mathematically.
For the Thread that inadvertently kicked started these mathematical discussions, Click Here
For the Original math thread, Click Here
What matters is the sequence of data, if any, that might be stored in or on such structures.
Watson's math simply applies to the probability / improbability of such data self-forming naturally (i.e. without intelligent intervention or aid).
So you want to consider DNA as a black box? I believe his argument gets even more tenuous at that point. While he does address the concept that there are some errors, I don't believe that he does enough on this tack. There is no experimental evidence that there aren't many more different combinations than he recommends, enough to blunt the odds that he calls impossible.
Many explanations have been given on this thread besides mine (which were brief).
You want me to extract Windows XP from DOS with a 96 byte key. My question is, what are the assumptions you take to make such a question relevant to evolution or origin of life in the first place? Several assumptions, such as calculating probabilities of specific sequences of DNA randomly forming in a single step, are flawed, as "edsheppa" has patiently pointed out. Another assumption is that early life was based on the same DNA-context it is today. The simplest enzymatically active RNAs, for example, are only 40 bp in length. Laboratory produced self-replicating RNAs are around 200. Certainly you understand that the demand for an "amoeba" is a jump?
The possibilities for ways in which life did not form are infinite. The trick is in finding hypotheses for how it could have formed. And some of these hypotheses are more valid, or science-based than others. That's all. We know life is here. We know it formed somehow. And how life progressed since then is a historical/scientific theory with strong supporting data.
It is already crystal clear that the math applies only to itself. The concept of evolution has nothing to do with what can, will or must happen in the future. A hundred more pages of eqations wouldn't acomplish any more than the first non-answer page. Evolutionary concepts only look back, they predict nothing.
The very bottom line is you can't prove that a million monkeys can't type Shakespeare because you can't prove a negative. All the number shaking does is to create a distraction from the real focus of evolutionary theory. The number shaking proposes a model that doesn't work. It doesn't work because it trys to predict. It fails on purpose.
Post 557 proposes an analogy. IF genetics works just like computer programing, THEN the analogy would be relevant. The problem is, genetics is not "information." Information is an analogy used to explain genetics, but not genetics itself. Genetics has to do with biochemical reactions, not bits of information.
To address the probabilities of all the potential biochemical reactions in the universe, you would need a mathamatical model that takes into account all the known and unknown factors in the universe.
Here's what all the known factors tell us: Life exists. The known factors do not tell us why or how. The unknown factors don't tell us anything because they are unknown.
There are only 10^80 atoms of matter in our entire universe. If you feel that you can mathematically demonstrate that there are 10^280 viable variations of a genome with certainty, then please post it as it would change Watson's mathematical conclusion for this thread.
Without that math, however, you're just whisteling Dixie.
No evidence is no evidence. If there is no evidence, then you can't logically claim that Watson's odds are blunted.
It's been more than 100 posts since I demonstrated the flaw in your claim that Windows XP could be "extracted" from DOS via bitflips. To expose that flaw, I used a cryptography analogy and tied that analogy to Watson's math for this thread.
It's a little late for more of your nonsensical questions at this point. Either you can extract Windows XP from DOS or you can't.
I say that you can't, based upon the math in this thread as well as the fact that no Key or Algorithm has been produced for such a task.
If you still want to defend your initial claim that you Can extract Windows XP from DOS, then "simply" show the Key and the Algorithm (e.g. bitflips, complex equations, whatever) necessary.
Then you didn't understand the math...
I disagree. We can view two identical (in appearances) double-helix structures. One such DNA strand might be coded to create an aardvark. The other might be programmed to create an amoebae.
Yet their structures are identical. How do we discern the difference between the two pieces of DNA? Well, we examine the sequence of the genetic coding instructions (A, C, G, and T bases) that form the double-helix structures.
In other words, we tell them apart by examining their data. Data, by the way, is information, contrary to your claim above...
It was intended to be truthful rather than polite. Every religion and ideology has an explanation for pain and suffering, but none of them very good. They are particularly bad at explaining the suffering of animals, and the fact that most do not survive long enough to reproduce.
I'm sorry you're confused. You made that claim, I'm saying it's incorrect.
The obvious answer is that the structures are not identical. Biochemical reactions are determined by both composition and length of each chain. The analogy of "information" is the same as saying that if you throw a lit match at gasoline, the gasoline gets the information to ignite.
I'll try. Let's stick to coding sections of the genome. IIRC current estimates are that there are ~30K genes. Let's say the average gene codes directly for a 100 amino acid protein (I'm sure this is conservative). That gives 3*10^6 codons.
As you know, there is significant redundancy in DNA coding. Every codon can code 64 values but there are only 20 amino acids. Let's go wth the average and say that every codon can have three variations.
Varying all the codons independently gives 3^(3*10^6) functionally equivalent (hence viable) humane genome variants. That's ~10^954242.
By your standards.
AndrewC and Bonaparte (if memory serves) jumped all over me when I made an equivalent claim. I found their criticism somewhat justified. Is the information in the code or in our having written it down?
I don't think that anyone is arguing over the quantity of potential permutations, but rather, the quantity of viable permutations...
You've said you could; you've said you couldn't. Naturally you've contradicted yourself at multiple points in this thread. The point at issue in Post #557, which you still haven't honestly addressed, is your claim that you can bitflip multiple paths between DOS and Windows XP.
Of course, the only way that you could do that would be if you had a Key and an appropriate Algorithm.
And I say that you have neither, and therefor can not get from DOS to Windows XP via bitflips.
NEWSFLASH: Windows XP did not evolve from DOS. Rather, Windows XP was designed, with some DOS programming being re-used in the creation of Windows XP. That's intelligent intervention, not natural, unguided evolution, by the way...
Regardless of the species which we are examining, the DNA structure will ALWAYS be the same double-helix configuration.
To discern which life form will be created by the double-helix structure in question, we examine the data contained in said DNA, stored via the sequence of A, C, G, and T bases.
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