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To: Southack
Once you read and understand all three linked articles and comments, you might discern that the author is discussing the probability of DATA being stored, not chemicals reacting with each other.

What a marvelous obfuscation. Perhaps you should answer my other posts:
1. What is the data content of your Hamlet string?
2. What is the data content for a simple 32 element self-replicating peptide string?
3. Why does "Data" matter at all - the real issue is the actual chemistry itself. Treating the problem as information or data is an abstraction. But if the chemistry indicates that the molecules in fact form very easily, in spite of your abstraction, that means that the abstraction is inapposite, not that the chemistry is wrong. Your monkeys are at best an analogy; the nature of chemical interactions reveals that the analogy is ill-considered.
4. Again, your example does not allow for the selection and replication of data. It must fail.

87 posted on 03/06/2002 12:05:27 PM PST by cracker
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To: cracker
"Why does "Data" matter at all - the real issue is the actual chemistry itself."

Data matters because data distinguishes a book written by Shakespeare from random letters formed by clouds in the sky above us.

It is data that distinguishes the DNA of the first cellular organism from that of Man's. Both Man and amoeba have DNA, after all, but what distinguishes the DNA from each other is the data.

Likewise, until we have data stored in DNA, we don't have Life. Instead, we just have a chemical compound/structure.

How did the data get there? That's a very valid question, worthy of a mathematical probability exercise (as this and other related threads indicate).

We can calculate the precise probability / improbability of data forming randomly / naturally / without intelligent aid.

That's precisely what this proof does. It shows you the mathematical probability / improbability of data self-forming without intelligent aid.

95 posted on 03/06/2002 12:27:13 PM PST by Southack
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