oldest theory disproved(ot but great)

[Saeviomagy]

Actually probability does break down when structure and design are involved. There is a reason you will never find a casino complete with flourescent lights carved out of the rocks by natural wind and erosion. Random chance is not good at producing design.

That's because it's random and not design. One of the fundamental parts of the concept 'design' is that it has to have some forethought. Arguing that design isn't random or vice versa is bordering on the nonsensical.

As for the casino - the likelyhood (not fact, not certainty - likelyhood) that you will never see one is beause it's an extremely complex pattern. It requires the simultaeneous occurrence of a very large number of random factors. The likelyhood of a pink elephant manifesting in the air next to you is the same as the likelyhood of a particular formation of any other type of particle, regardless of concepts such as order or design.

There are a couple of issues. One, which I pointed out is the fact that in a random drawing you are just as likely to draw an e as a z. Not so in language. I still would be interested in seeing how long it would take a random computer program to produce even a fullintelligible sentence.

Lets think up an example that might get something across to you.

Toss a coin. Keep tossing it. At some point, assuming you're not cheating, you will get a run of either heads or tails. You will get lots of heads or tails in a row.

Now. Roll a die. At some point, you will get lots of a certain number in a row.

Now roll a 26-sided die. At some point, you will get lots of a certain letter. Keep rolling long enough, and you'll be able to take a subset of your rolling which WILL have the distribution of letters required for human language.

It's a phenomenon called 'clumping'. Any real random number generator will do it, because a pattern with a predominance of a certain outcome is just as likely as a pattern with a predominance of some other outcome, or a pattern with no dominant result.

Furthermore, when looking for a specific outcome in any random generation you have lowered your likelyhood of getting what you want. If youwant to roll a 6 on a six sided dice, the odds are one in 6. But there is a 5 in 6 chance of getting something else. Thus while theoritically the odds of any one outcome arising are the same, the likelyhood of a nonspecific outcome is always greater than that of a specific. When you start to really multiply this into the millions, the odds of getting any one result getting smaller and smaller until statisticians feel comfortable telling you a thing will never happen in this universe. I believe the number thrown about is the the improbability equal to the number of particles in the universe. Therefore, while the monkey theory may (and I stress may cause there are other issues with it) be valid in a infinite universe with infinite time our universe has neither.

Any statistician who feels comfortable with using the exact words "will never happen in this universe" with no qualifiers is someone who doesn't understand the most basic elements of his own craft. "Will most likely never happen in this universe" is perfectly acceptable.

In the coin flipping example, there is a 1/2 chance that the coin will come up heads. This doesn't by any chance mean that you need to flip it twice to have heads come up. Nor does it mean that flipping it twice will result in heads coming up. It just means that 1/2 flips will, over a sufficiently large sample, will be heads.

That's why some event which is extremely unlikely can never be ruled out of happening. No matter what the odds, it COULD happen right now. It could never happen. It could happen 8 times in the next 6 seconds. We can assign probabilities to all these things, and we can label some as insignificant, not worth bothering about etc, but we can never label them as impossible.

p.s. On my random character/phrase recognition program (aptly named "Monkey.java"), the phrase " This" took some 8317289 randomly generated characters (from a set of 91 possible characters) to produce. Statistically the combination should come up 1/6240321451 combinations of any given 5 characters from that set. Looks like I got lucky.

I would run it on longer sentences, but I fear it would be a rather fruitless waste of my time. The chances of it finishing a 19 letter sentence within my lifetime are rather slim...

 

[doctorjeff98]

Re: Re: Re: oldest theory disproved

And, having made use of MTS, that is a perfectly appropriate response, and more likely to solve your problems. [/B][/QUOTE]



Microsoft Technical Support? I think if your last name isn't Gates, you won't get much support from them there 800 numbers. At least I never have.

I also like to type in 'serpent' when I'm tired, ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss...wonder why I don't type zzzzzzz's instead?

 

[alsih2o]

wow, this thread has really gone places. and i just thought monkey poop was funny

 

[Wicht]

wow, this thread has really gone places. and i just thought monkey poop was funny

It was.

I am going to withdraw from arguing anymore. Before we really do shift over to arguing evolution and get the moderators after us.

 

[alsih2o]

It was.

I am going to withdraw from arguing anymore. Before we really do shift over to arguing evolution and get the moderators after us.

ah, the wicht is wise

(hint)

 

[Wicht]

Ok, just because I can't resist, one parting shot and then I really am done with arguing.

That's because it's random and not design. One of the fundamental parts of the concept 'design' is that it has to have some forethought. Arguing that design isn't random or vice versa is bordering on the nonsensical.

This I believe is exactly the point. Design is not random and completely random chance does not produce design. To argue otherwise is a bit nonsensical I agree.

 

[Pielorinho]

Monkeys are way funny. Evolution debates are not.

Monkeys pooping on computers? Freakin' hilarious.

Daniel

 

[Dr. Harry]

Well, yes and no. Some life forms are clearly more derived that others, and on such rests cladistic analysis.

Derived vs. Ancestral, yes; some species are more dissimilar from their ancestral species of X years ago than other species, but I wanted to clarify a common misunderstanding than evolution is a progressing chain of development, a "what's right?" instead of a "what's right now?". I do not think that you made this error, but I wanted to clarify this point to anyone who might not have considered this point.

I gave one example. In dinosaur paleontology there are dozens of other examples I can think of easily. Ceratopsians are supposed to have arisen from something very similar to Psittacosaurus for example. But not exactly, because Psittacosaurus has certain derived features that disqualify it for ancestry. My example with Archeopterix is another.


No, no clearly and closely related species appear until tens of millions of years later, when there is a virtual explosion of closely related (although clearly flightless and not necessarily feathered) relatives in the form of the Maniraptoriformes. I don't certainly require that all living forms be fossilized and catalogued, but that particular incident is most embarrassing for the dinosaur-bird hypothesis, and is one that it's detractors (who come from the Protoavis camp, or the "thecodont" camp) hold up in askance to the theory. It's not something that alone could kill the theory, because the "blotchiness" of the fossil record is certainly a well-known attribute, but at the same time, this particular absense is very glaring and very hard to explain.

It is interesting that our differences might hinge on a finer point than I first thought. What you are describing as "very glaring and very hard to explain" - or what I read as you describing this - seems to me a point that may be important in the light of determining descent and relationships among species but not a problem when viewed in a larger sense. I do not understand your choice of the word "very".

The measurable rate of evolutionary change in a species is much greater than that required to explain the rate of change in natural history. This difference seems to be due to the observations that (1) mutations do not tend to take hold if their is no strong environmental selection pressure and (2) mutations do not tend to take hold in large, communicating populations. This indicates that most evolutionary change should be expected in isolated populations undergoing enviromental change; even here, the most common historical result has been extinction. The idea of punctuated equilibrium I do not consider a cop-out, or even all that revolutionary. It seems to explain the "rapid" rate of evolutionary change well, and it is testable and measureable.

Certainly Einstein's theory replaced Newton's. That doesn't imply that it didn't derive from Newton's earlier work -- Newton's work is quite accurate despite it's lack of refinements, and as I understand it (not having the level of expertise that you do) Einstein's work itself will probably require more refinement yet, as it doesn't completely describe what we see in some extreme situations, such as supermassive black holes and the like, but Einstein's "refinements" over Newton's earlier work increased our understanding of the universe on an order of magnitude not seen in many, many years.

I am quite well aware of the nature of Newton's theories to Einstein's and picked that example for a reason. Evolution is a very useful tool. The relationships between species that it allows us to construct, especially with the tool of cladistic analysis, is most probably entirely correct. But it's explanation of exactly how that happened is full of holes, conjecture and speculation.

Here I must continue to disagree. For me to admit that Newtonian physics was "replaced" would be to say that Newton was wrong and he wasn't, in the areas he could test. In one sentence you say that Newton was replaced, in a later one, merely "refined". If that is the sense you are using here for evolutionary biology, or any aspect of science, I wholeheartedly agree with you.

We seem to disagree over the size of the holes, the nature of the conjecture and speculation (see links in my earlier post for the testability of evolution) and whether the road is drivable for our vehicle, but our difference may be illustrated by the previous paragraph.

 

[Kugar]

Ok, just because I can't resist, one parting shot and then I really am done with arguing.



This I believe is exactly the point. Design is not random and completely random chance does not produce design. To argue otherwise is a bit nonsensical I agree.

Yet admidst the swirling chaos of a universe of random engery and matter, we are privilaged to have Las Vegas. What a fantastic world. At some scale, our designs must look the same as when we have a hot night and roll five natual twenties. (see I brought it back to gaming)

Kugar

 

[Dr. Harry]

Ok, just because I can't resist, one parting shot and then I really am done with arguing.



This I believe is exactly the point. Design is not random and completely random chance does not produce design. To argue otherwise is a bit nonsensical I agree.

"Design" is poorly defined; in fact, here it has been left undefined, to mean what the user of the moment wants it to mean.

What is design? To choose to compose (say) *Hamlet*, or to generate a set of characters that replicates the play *Hamlet*?

In both discussions, "design" is not defined, and "chance" is not random. I hope that there were some scientists invovled with the monkey demonstration, because I think there may well be things we could learn from this:

Did the monkeys seem to associate their typing on the keyboard with the production of text on the computer screen?

Did the monkeys seem to realize that different keys produced different effects?

Did the monkeys keep hitting keys once they were in a situation described by one of the above two questions?

Can we teach monkeys to use dice?

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