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Totoro
Famous Hero
in User
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posted June 17, 2009 12:27 AM |
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They were alienated from society and depressed human beings.
And such cases will increase drastically in the future.
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If you say that people will shoot people just because they have time on their hands, that means that everyone has a killer inside of them that's waiting to come out, according to you."
I don't like that way of thinking; that a person has little something inside that may come out. A person can be brainwashed to do anything and I don't see that as a release of a little creature inside.
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"Do you think that the nature of man is killing eachother and that work is the only thing that stops us?"
No, a person that doesn't work is not a killer, old people don't start killing other people when they retire. But when people don't have to/can't do anything, some of them (especially young, in the age when normally everything ought to happen in their lives) may have a snap in their brains.
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Rarensu
Known Hero
Formerly known as RTI
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posted June 17, 2009 03:25 AM |
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@ JJ
I makes sense because single-celled organisms have no sensory organs, so the easiest way for them to hunt or avoid predators is to use extra sensory perception. Also, it is extremely improbable that the first complex cell could be assembled randomly without help. Psychokinesis could be exactly the kind of help that early life needed to get going. P.S. Sorry for the delay. For some reason I had a lot of difficulty understanding your first two posts.
____________
Sincerely,
A Proponent of Spelling, Grammar, Punctuation, and Courtesy.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted June 17, 2009 04:30 AM |
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it is extremely improbable that the first complex cell could be assembled randomly without help.
Oh really? Could you please quantify that probability for us?
Failing that, could you explain how you might go about calculating it?
Failing that, could you explain what factors such a probability would be based upon?
Failing that, could you at least explain how one could show that the probability of some alternate cause would be higher?
Eagerly awaiting your detailed response...
____________
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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TheDeath
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
with serious business
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posted June 17, 2009 04:42 AM |
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Quote:
I makes sense because single-celled organisms have no sensory organs, so the easiest way for them to hunt or avoid predators is to use extra sensory perception.
That is interesting, I never thought about that.
____________
The above post is subject to SIRIOUSness.
No jokes were harmed during the making of this signature.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted June 17, 2009 05:02 AM |
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@Death
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I never thought about that.
That's because it's ridiculous.
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Rarensu
Known Hero
Formerly known as RTI
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posted June 17, 2009 05:38 AM |
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Edited by Rarensu at 05:40, 17 Jun 2009.
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Dear Corribus,
Life requires around 2000 enzymes. These enzymes are made of combination of 20 different amino acids, in chains of several hundred. The order of the enzymes within a chain is critical. Furthermore, while these 20 amino acids occur commonly under organic soup conditions, there are also a vast number of other amino acids which commonly occur but are not part of any enzyme. Finally, these enzymes tend to break down quickly under the conditions that create them, so it is necessary for all of them to be produced almost simultaneously.
Sir Fred Hoyle calculated that the probability of having a soup of amino acids randomly arrange itself into the enzymes for life is 1 in 10^40,000. My own personal calculation is much harsher; 1:10^1,000,000. However, the number of atoms in the universe is only 10^80, and the age the universe is only 10^19 milliseconds. This means that if you converted the entire universe into organic soup, you would still be nowhere close to finding a living cell randomly assembled.
For a suitable metaphor, I prefer Sir Fred Hoyle's statement that the probability of randomly assembling a cell in organic soup is the same as the probability that `a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein'. (Actually, this metaphor is quite optimistic if you work out the math.)
____________
Sincerely,
A Proponent of Spelling, Grammar, Punctuation, and Courtesy.
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Mytical
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Chaos seeking Harmony
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posted June 17, 2009 05:50 AM |
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Lol the person who first thought "The world is round" was probably thought crazy and laughed at also  . Note, nowhere did I say (or even mean to imply) that my theory was scientific in nature. I am not that far gone mentally..yet.
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Message received.
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DagothGares
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
No gods or kings
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posted June 17, 2009 08:39 AM |
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Quote:
the person who first thought "The world is round" was probably thought crazy and laughed at also
I highly doubt that, if you've seen some of the presocratici. I think that a round world theory would not be so weird as the theory that stated 'everything goes back to their own elemen' as an explanation to why birds fly and rocks fall.
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If you have any more questions, go to Dagoth Cares.
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Rarensu
Known Hero
Formerly known as RTI
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posted June 17, 2009 09:04 AM |
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Greek philosophers have known that the earth was a sphere since Eratosthenes calculated its circumference in 240 BCE by measuring shadows in Alexandria and Syene during the summer solstice. Even as far back as Pythagorus in 570 BCE philosophers were pretty sure that a spherical earth made the most sense.
Columbus had trouble convincing people in 1490 AD that traveling west could get you to India. The royalty had always known about the earthsphere; they objected only to the practicality of such a voyage. It was the commoners who couldn't understand; most people are ignorant and stupid and happy to stay that way.
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Sincerely,
A Proponent of Spelling, Grammar, Punctuation, and Courtesy.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted June 17, 2009 09:40 AM |
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*Looks at the posts*
*Looks at Corribus*
*Blinks*
Read here
And then here
Reading this I had an interesting idea about how things actually haven't change within the last couple thousand years. People have always used slivers of "safe" facts and then spun a web of tales around them to fill in the blanks, starting with myths and finally culminating into fully fledged religions to explain and get a grip on things somehow. Think, for example, about the far-reaching implications it has, if people actually believed you could read the future from some goose liver or the fall of some bones.
Nowadays, with science de-mythologizing a lot, but not all, it is an interesting phenomenon to see that the same procedures still take place. The only difference is that science itself is abused for tale-spinning.
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I'm no expert in biology, not to mention CELL biology, but to my knowledge cells don't hunt. Even if they would, what could they hunt except other cells and vice versa? So they would have to esp the "thoughts" of the hunter cells - while the hunters or predators would use this method to find their prey, which seems, well, ridiculous, and, Mytical, the fact that the idea that the world is round may have been laughed at, is NOT equivalent to saying that if a claim is ridiculous chances are it's true.
As far as I know cells have the ability to react on external influences like temperature change, making any "esp" properties highly unnecessary.
Of course the juggling with probabilities is part of all this as well. 10>19, 10>80, billions, trillions, gazillions, I've read a lot of Jumbo-junkyard books myself. However, probabilities provide a lot of traps for the unwary to run into. The first problem in probability mathematics is to identify the number of possible events or results. The second one is the question, whether all events or results as such have the same basic probability. The third are the external factors.
A simple example would be this: You have a number of tetraeders, let's say 4 with sides numbered 1 to 4. If you roll them on a table, here are 4>4 possible events, 256, or so it seems, making 4-4-4-4 a highly improbable result. But what do we know about the table and the tetraeders? Let's make the table slightly magnetic and one side of the tetraeders magnetic as well, but poled the same way, let's say the 1-side, and suddenly, since 1 will just not fall, chances are suddenly 1/81, 3 times as high.
It gets fairly interesting, if we make all tetrader sides differently poled magnetic (so that they connect), but with a different magnetic "strength" for rach side. Determining probabilities now becomes a lottery, since we simply don't know whether all single events have the same probability (unlikely) and if they don't have the same, how they differ.
Now let's say we have 100.000 tetraeders. Chances are 1/4>100.000 for every tetraeder showing a 4 if you roll them - but that's only if every number has the same probability to appear - which may not be the case (and in fact is highly improbable).
Speculation is speculation, no matter which numbers or probabilities are conjured to support them. If I would have to speculate about life I would simply claim that life must be EXTREMELY PROBABLE or LIKELY to develop, simply because it's so over-abundant. Same thing with stars. There are so many of them - it must be highly likely for stars in our universe to develop. 
And one last personal probability observation: I think, it's highly unlikely that any one of us here will stumble over a valid and true explanation for things science cannot explain (yet).
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Mytical
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Chaos seeking Harmony
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posted June 17, 2009 09:53 AM |
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The problem with statistics is that to an individual occurance, it means absolutely nothing. This would go with probability also. So anything IS possible, given enough time. However, this is not about science, statistics, probability. It is about the supernatural and paranormal which exsist outside of science (at least current science, who knows what the future might hold). Yes, yes I know that it would no longer be paranormal or supernatural once it becomes varifiable...
My question to the people who post here is..has there ever been anything happen to or arround you that just defies explination. Note : Not that has no ration or reasonable explination, but that the explination eludes you.
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Message received.
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Rarensu
Known Hero
Formerly known as RTI
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posted June 17, 2009 10:55 AM |
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I am certain that such events have occurred in my presence. However, I am extremely unobservant; I tend to walk around daydreaming not watching what's around me, so I have never actually noticed any of these events.
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Sincerely,
A Proponent of Spelling, Grammar, Punctuation, and Courtesy.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted June 17, 2009 11:02 AM |
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Yes, (and I'm tempted to say "of course").
I won't go into details about the circumstances that "made it possible" I met my second and current wife. Suffice to say that - without knowing about each other - we both separately took certain uncharacteristic and even strange actions for reasons we couldn't explain, except that there was a certain "compulsion" or "drive" to do them at that time which in hindsight provided the only possible window of meeting each other.
What topped it off was that when we met for the first time we both had a strong feeling of already knowing each other (in a more thorough, intimate sense, not knowing like having seen each other) as if some deeply hidden memory stirred.
Actually my wife has a grade in mathematics and her mind works as rational as mine. We are both aware that this may all just some strange illusion or delusion, wishful thinking, whatever. It is possible to try and concoct a rational explanation that will include a plethora of words like happenstance, accidental, spontaneous and so on, and telling all this sounds ridiculous. There is nothing to hold on to, no proof, no nothing - but it doesn't feel by far as ridiculous as it sounds.
Now, note that I don't believe in something like fate. Neither does my wife.
The thing is, that you can speculate now a lot about what that may or may not mean - but it doesn't make much sense to do so, since it's based on IFs (IF it was all indeed not random and IF our feelings about that are indeed "true" or "correct") and there is no further evidence as such to suggest a certain direction. Sure, we MIGHT know each other from some past life, there might be extrasensory perception involved at one stage or another - but we MIGHT have just instinctively (on some subconscious level) recognized a certain kinship, mentally, emotionally, even genetically (we might be distant relatives with certain properties) - even IF the IFs are true.
The bottom line is, of course, that - since this is something quite positive - dwelling upon it leads into a dead end. Current level of information and data insufficient for anything conclusive.
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Rarensu
Known Hero
Formerly known as RTI
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posted June 17, 2009 11:47 AM |
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Perform past-life regressions on yourselves using hypnosis memory retrieval. I recommend paying a professional to help. You'll likely discover that the two of you did know each other in your previous lives. It isn't scientific proof, but it will at least convince the two of you.
____________
Sincerely,
A Proponent of Spelling, Grammar, Punctuation, and Courtesy.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted June 17, 2009 12:01 PM |
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That's in fact something we've decided to indeed give a go one of these days. There are some things to check before that, but we'll see where that leads and how conslusive that will be.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted June 17, 2009 03:19 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 19:32, 17 Jun 2009.
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@Rarensu
Quote:
Sir Fred Hoyle calculated that the probability of having a soup of amino acids randomly arrange itself into the enzymes for life is 1 in 10^40,000. My own personal calculation is much harsher; 1:10^1,000,000. However, the number of atoms in the universe is only 10^80, and the age the universe is only 10^19 milliseconds. This means that if you converted the entire universe into organic soup, you would still be nowhere close to finding a living cell randomly assembled.
This is a overused strawman argument which a also betrays a fundamental ignorance of statistics and chemistry, and, perhaps, displays a willful attempt to misrepresent fact in order to support an erroneous, biased conclusion.
Note that I have emphasized one of the words in this quote using boldened text. The probability you have calculated may indeed be correct for a random process. But who said the process is random? You assume biochemistry, organic chemistry and physics have no rules whatsoever. Chemical reactions aren't random. If you throw a bunch of chemicals into a pot, heat and stir, you don't just get random products. You get specific products. Why? Because chemistry operates under a set of rules that direct reactions toward specific ends.
At one point I might have taken the time to reinvent the wheel and draft a detailed rebuttal of this argument myself, but it gets old after the fiftieth time, so I'm just going to refer you to an excellent website that provides a detailed explanation of why this very argument makes no sense whatsoever.
Rebuttal
Enjoy. The whole website is a great primer on the horrors of creationist "science".
Quote:
For a suitable metaphor, I prefer Sir Fred Hoyle's statement that the probability of randomly assembling a cell in organic soup is the same as the probability that `a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein'. (Actually, this metaphor is quite optimistic if you work out the math.)
And yet Boeing 747s are assembled in much less time. Could that be because Boeing 747s are not assembled randomly? That there are rules to aircraft assembly? If you want to see a very lengthy rebuttal of the airplane argument (I wish people would get more creative instead of using the same ones over and over and over and over and over and over again), see Richard Dawkin's book the Blind Watchmaker.
@JJ
Sorry JJ, I am plum out of time at the moment. I'll give your post(s) a read when I return.
EDIT:
OK
@Mytical
Quote:
My question to the people who post here is..has there ever been anything happen to or arround you that just defies explination.
Of course. I'm a scientist. In experimentation I have (often) found things that had no immediate explanation. However, those explanations eventually came with the use of the scientific method. I mean, it'd be kind of silly if I mixed two chemicals and the solution turned blue and I went: "Gee, I have no explanation for that. Must be ghosts!"
@JJ
Regarding your first post, the one that begins with:
Quote:
*Looks at the posts*
*Looks at Corribus*
*Blinks*
Read here
And then here
I can't say I disagree with anything you wrote, especially,
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The only difference is that science itself is [nowadays] abused for tale-spinning.
Yes, it's abused by people who don't understand or purposely misrepresent scientific knowledge or theories.
Now, I've read your post like four times because the first bit I quoted up above (Looking at me) led me to believe that you were about to say something I was going to disagree with. I could be misinterpreting your post, so maybe there was supposed to be something like that in there. But I can't figure out what you were trying to say by "*Looks at Corribus*" and then directing me to read an article about pseudoscience. Care to elaborate?
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted June 17, 2009 08:02 PM |
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No. In fact I had a pretty clear impression how your reaction to *the posts* would look - which I boldly assumed to be pretty similar to mine. I looked your direction because I was sure that we would agree with each other here, even if we might see other things differently.
So I linked - for the others - with pseudoscience and to the list of things considered so - and of course paranormal things and ufos are there.
The interesting thing is that you wrote your answer without reading my post first - and I can't say that I disagree with anything you wrote there either - we even both jumped onto the probability train which I find rather funny, bcause we basicall said the same thing there.
Would you really trust me to be link YOU to an article about PSEUDOscience? I mean, wouldn't that be extremely foolish of me? I know that I can be quite foolish sometimes, but there are limits.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted June 17, 2009 08:05 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 20:06, 17 Jun 2009.
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Ok, that's what I thought.
I just couldn't figure out why you would be directing me to that article. So I read the post several times, convinced there had to be something in there for me to disagree with. I was like "Yeah, I agree with everything he's saying, but it's gotta be a trick. What the heck am I missing?"
____________
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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TheDeath
Responsible
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with serious business
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posted June 17, 2009 10:34 PM |
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Quote:
Quote:
the person who first thought "The world is round" was probably thought crazy and laughed at also
I highly doubt that, if you've seen some of the presocratici. I think that a round world theory would not be so weird as the theory that stated 'everything goes back to their own elemen' as an explanation to why birds fly and rocks fall.
Because "gravity" makes more sense if you go by that route? 
Quote:
This is a overused strawman argument which a also betrays a fundamental ignorance of statistics and chemistry, and, perhaps, displays a willful attempt to misrepresent fact in order to support an erroneous, biased conclusion.
Note that I have emphasized one of the words in this quote using boldened text. The probability you have calculated may indeed be correct for a random process. But who said the process is random? You assume biochemistry, organic chemistry and physics have no rules whatsoever. Chemical reactions aren't random. If you throw a bunch of chemicals into a pot, heat and stir, you don't just get random products. You get specific products. Why? Because chemistry operates under a set of rules that direct reactions toward specific ends.
Just a question, isn't the "initial condition" random? I mean the Big Bang or whatever.
I'm using a pseudo-random approach mind you, because in software or machines, there is no such thing as random. All random operations have a "seed", if the seed (initial condition) is always the same, so will the number sequence.
So, what are the chances, given a totally random initial condition (this is AN ASSUMPTION, of course, I'm not foolish to say otherwise) that life would form? Have you ever heard about it being calculated somewhere?
This would be a grossly approximation of course, because we don't even know much about the Universe. But I'm curious with our current theories what we'll end up with
____________
The above post is subject to SIRIOUSness.
No jokes were harmed during the making of this signature.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted June 18, 2009 01:50 AM |
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@Death
Quote:
Just a question, isn't the "initial condition" random? I mean the Big Bang or whatever.
Well a lot of this is more of a philosophical argument than a scientific one. Most modern interpretations of quantum mechanics are that the universe is non-deterministic. Certainly in the quantum world certain events and processes are random. However, macroscopic events are the averages of countless numbers of individual quantum (random) events, and these macroscopic averages DO follow certain rules which are predictable.
I'll give you a real life example. Consider a small vial filled with a solution of fluorescent quinine molecules. The vial is initially kept in the dark. At some time, a laser of the appropriate wavelength illuminates the vial, and the quinine molecules absorb 1 photon each. We can ensure that the quinine molecules absorb their photons at (roughly) the same time by utilizing what's called pulsing the laser.
If a photon passes into a single quinine molecule, will that molecule absorb the photon? As it turns out, the process is random, but that does not mean there aren't rules that govern the process. There are a lot of physical rules that determine the probability that a molecule will absorb a given photon. For a large number of photons and a large number of molecules (or a large number of single-molecule measurements), we can easily predict what the result will be. However, for a single measurement of a single photon being absorbed by a single molecule, the effect is completely random. There is no way a priori to predict whether absorption will occur. Thus the process is random, but it is still governed by rules that affect the average result over a large number of repetitions under identical conditions.
Ok, so let's assume that 10% of your sample of quinine molecules absorb photon energy and are "excited". What happens now? Well, that excess potential energy is eventually fed back into the environment. There are a number of ways in which this can happen. Two of the primary pathways are fluorescence and internal conversion, which is a fancy way of saying heat dispersion through molecular vibrations. Well, if we take one of those excited molecules, what is the probability that it will go via path (A) or path (B) and, furthermore, how long does it take to make that choice? As it turns out, because these are quantum events, both processes are probabilistic, BUT both factors are also governed by a set of rules - very complicated rules, but rules nonetheless. So, if you took one excited quinine molecule, you would not be able to predict either how long it stays excited before giving up its energy or, when it does give up its energy, what route it's likely to take. It's just not able to be determined with 100% confidence. You can predict the probability, if you know the rules, and if you have a large number of excited molecules, you can say, beforehand, what the average molecule is going to do (how many molecules will relax as a function of time, and what fraction, on average, will relax by path (A) and path (B).
Does that mean the universe is nondeterministic? On a quantum level, yes. On a macro-level, well... that's up for debate, but it is certain that chemical (and hence biological) processes, though probabilistic on a quantum level, are governed by rules.
Whether the starting point is random or not doesn't really matter as far as the rules go. Let's say you start with only 10 unexcited quinine molecules. When you blast them with light, the number of excited molecules might be, on average, 1, but with such a small sample size, you could see a large number of variability from one experiment to the next. So, sometimes you'll get 0 excited molecules, sometimes 1, sometimes 2, etc., with the average being 1. Just because the number of excited molecules (your starting point) is random, doesn't mean the rules have changed. Relaxation statistics will be the same; averaged properties will be the same. The randomness of the starting position doesn't change the rules. It might change the outcome locally.
Quote:
So, what are the chances, given a totally random initial condition (this is AN ASSUMPTION, of course, I'm not foolish to say otherwise) that life would form? Have you ever heard about it being calculated somewhere?
I don't know, but the rules governing the chemical reactions do not depend on your condition. Obviously life formed on earth. It did not on Venus (that we know of). Why? Are the rules of chemistry different than on venus? Of course not. The conditions are different. If you change the starting materials (conditions), you can get different results. To go back to my simplified example above, absorption of light and fluorescence are both dependent on a large number of factors. If you change the solvent polarity, for example, the probability of a quinine molecule absorbing a light photon may be 15% instead of 10%. An excited quinine molecule may be more likely to relax by fluorescence at 10 degrees C than 20 degrees C. But I stress that the rules haven't changed. The conditions have. The rules are complex and incorporate these different variables. If you change the conditions such that you no longer understand the output/results, it's not because the rules changed. It's because you didn't understand the rules as well as you thought you did. That's why we do science - to understand the rules better.
To get this all back to the original reason it was brought up, though - to claim that a single cell couldn't have come together by chance is, well, most likely correct. The probability is staggeringly low of that number of isolated carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and other atoms coming together just in the right way to instantaneously form a cell would be ridiculously low. But that's a strawman argument because it's not what an abiogenetic theories – ANY abiogenetic theory - states.
Chemical reactions aren't random. Quantum events are random, but macroscopic reactions are not. To see how this applies to, for example, proteins, let’s look at it a bit further.
First, elements don't exist as individual atoms. They exist as molecules. Consider beer. Lot’s of ethanol in beer. Do you consider a molecule of ethanol (C2H5OH) to be miraculous? There are, let's say, 100 elements in the period table. There are 9 atoms in an ethanol molecule. What would be the probability of C2H50H being formed out of all the possibilities? Well, using the logic of “random assembly”, the probability would be extremely low, especially if you include the certain way the molecule has to be bonded together in space. How many ethanol molecules in a bottle of beer? God must have put together ethanol molecules because there's no way so many could have been randomly assembled in a bottle of beer. Just impossible.
Well that's a ridiculous conclusion, of course, because not all elements have the same abundance (a fact I ignored), but even aside from that, we know that atoms don't bond randomly. There are certain rules. A carbon bonds 4 times (usually) in tetrahedral geometry. An oxygen bonds twice. Etc., etc. A lot of elements in periodic table are either so absurdly scarce or they don’t bond in the correct way that combinations including them can be effectively eliminated from consideration. When you start incorporating all these rules and eliminations, you realize that ethanol isn't actually as crazy an idea as your initial prediction might have suggested. When you know the rules, you see that molecules form naturally if the right constituent molecules are present, because those rules make ethanol a high probability end of a soup of reacting carbons, oxygens and hydrogen.
Moving up from small molecules, you see that the probabilities of forming big molecules are also whittled down the same way when you consider that the processes leading to their formation are not random. Forming an amino acid from atomic constituents would be quite a feat, but nobody’s suggesting that molecules form that way. Big molecules form from small molecules. If ethanol is quite easy to naturally form, and ammonia is quite easy to naturally form (and other small molecules), the rules of chemistry allow – nay, demand – that bigger molecules form from them. Particularly when you have EONS of reaction time to work with.
What about a protein? Yeah, to assemble randomly the number of atoms into a protein at one instant would be INSANE. It would never happen. But when you chemical rules that lead to the formation of amino acids, and then rules that lead to the formation of amino acids into functional proteins - especially when you have so much time to accomplish it - suddenly the odds aren't so staggering.
Ok, you don’t like the scientific explanation. Consider the analogy of language.
Let’s say I give you the sentence:
The dog ate my homework.
Have you ever considered how improbable it is for such a sentence to form randomly? Let’s say you wrote a computer program to randomly generate strings of letters. If I grant you that you are only allowed to use one of the 26 letters of the roman alphabet, plus one for spaces, the sentence has 23 letters in it. What are the odds that 27 characters could randomly come together and form that sentence? How many cycles would you have to go through before you arrived at this result? Holy crap those are low odds. A miracle!!!! God must have written it!!
Well of course that’s stupid, because you don’t write sentences by randomly assembling letters. Letters are assembled into words using specific rules. Those words are formed into a sentence in a particular order following rules of grammar. If they formed in a different order, the sentence wouldn’t make sense; it wouldn’t be functional. Thus the rules of language narrow down the acceptable number of combinations of letters for a sentence. Given an absurdly large number of combination for a 23 character sentence, only certain outcomes are allowed by the rules of the system. So even if you were “randomly” assembling letters in to a 23 character sentence, if your computer program excludes all combinations that are forbidden for your set of rules (all the nonsense combinations), you’d find that the number of possibilities becomes orders and orders of magnitude less. I.e., it’s quite reasonable to expect a random generation of “The dog ate my homework” if only certain outcomes allowed by language are considered, and you gave your generating algorithm enough time to cycle through the possibilities.
The probability becomes even GREATER if you don’t have to start over every time you get a wrong result. The website I liked to far above uses a dice-rolling example to demonstrate this. See this link: http://www.creationtheory.org/Probability/Page03.xhtml
Anyway, the same goes for molecules. While the number of combinations of atoms in even a small molecule are ridiculously large, only a very small percentage of them are allowed by the rules of chemistry. Even if the probability of forming an amino acid are probabilistically very small, if you wait YEARS, MILLENIA, the rules of chemistry ensure that some amino acids will, on average, eventually be formed, if the starting materials allow for it.
And really, the ball just rolls down hill from there.
Well, I didn’t proof any of that. I’ll do so later.
____________
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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This thread is pages long: 
