Chance v. Design Part 4 (Evolution)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, July 08, 2009, 15:04 (5415 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Wednesday, July 08, 2009, 15:26

dhw,
> Matt writes: You and Dr Turell appear to say that since life has been assigned such a low probability (under specious assumptions) then there exists a converse selection against it happening. If life has a .00000000000150 chance of occurring randomly, it is not the case that there is a .99999999999850 chance of it not happening by chance. This simply recreates the Monte Carlo Fallacy. Every event has an equal chance of being selected.
> 
> So whenever my pet chimpanzee sits at the typewriter, I should be prepared to believe that he has an equal chance of hitting the right keys to produce a Shakespeare sonnet. - Yes. That's how raw probability works. Although you're not taking the preferences of the chimp into account. - I could even write a computer program that could do the same result, though the size of the sonnet would limit how many years it would take. - 
Though ultimately life is a stochastic process (as I responded to George) and is based on past states. I think the same goes for the processes that would have given us the transition from non-life to life. This changes the system somewhat, but in such a way that it is beneficial for life. - EDITED - I should tie this in to the previous example. You're letting yourself be tricked by the low odds of this happening. If the sonnet is... 10 letters (simplified) you have 26^10 possible chances of hitting that sonnet. But each individual failure has as much chance of being selected as the single success.