1. Comment #432974 by D_mendes on November 18, 2009 at 8:16 pm

at work right now... can't wait to watch this when i get home

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2. Comment #432978 by Kmita on November 18, 2009 at 8:28 pm

I'm also unable to watch it atm. On campus without headphones... Nice to see another video of substantial length pop up.

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3. Comment #432989 by NewEnglandBob on November 18, 2009 at 8:57 pm

It was wonderful to listen to this and follow along in chapter 13 of TGSOE and notice the additions and subtractions, both significant and trivial.

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4. Comment #432991 by InYourFaceNewYorker on November 18, 2009 at 8:59 pm

Awww! I have to go to class now so I'll have to wait a few hours to watch it! :(

Julie

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5. Comment #432994 by Sally Luxmoore on November 18, 2009 at 9:05 pm

Wonderful!

I am very lucky - this is the second time I have heard this lecture, the first being in Oxford, earlier this year.

It is just as good as I remembered and I love the powerpoint images.

Fascinating to see the 'sagittal section' through Richard's head. What an extraordinary thing to see your own living brain like that!

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6. Comment #432996 by Twatsworth on November 18, 2009 at 9:06 pm

Does anyone know why Richard thinks Sherlock Holmes is "preposterous"? I was rather upset to hear that, since I grew up with the Sherlock Holmes stories, and they are to me like a long deceased, beloved pet dog.

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7. Comment #432997 by whatwoulddawkinsdo on November 18, 2009 at 9:12 pm

Damn when is Dawkins gonna come to south Florida?!?!?

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8. Comment #433001 by InYourFaceNewYorker on November 18, 2009 at 9:21 pm

Twatsworth, it's just a difference of opinion. I have a Mac, and I think it's the superior computer. Lots of people will tell me that Macs suck. "Back to the Future" is one of my all time favorite movies, and I've been a rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth fan for twenty years now. I know people who tell me that BTTF sucks. So what? Why is it so upsetting to hear when somebody doesn't like something that you think is great?

Julie

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9. Comment #433002 by Twatsworth on November 18, 2009 at 9:24 pm

Don't be silly. If somebody thinks something is "preposterous", it's quite natural to assume there's a reason. There must be a reason why Richard thinks Sherlock Holmes is preposterous, and I'd be intrigued to hear it.

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10. Comment #433006 by Sciros on November 18, 2009 at 9:42 pm

I thought it was that Richard found the character Sherlock Holmes preposterous. The reason being that Holmes was, for instance, perfectly content not knowing (he didn't care) whether the earth is round or flat. It was probably just a bit of humor from Arthur Conan Doyle, but I also remember reading bits like that and thinking "wow, that's silly."

I have a Mac, and I think it's the superior computer.

Macs, windows boxes, linux boxes -- it all depends on what you want from your computer. Macs and Linux machines are great for lots of things like software development, macs and windows are about even for graphics/music creation (used to be that macs had the better software), windows has much more support for gaming, etc. Only way you can really go wrong is if you buy something that doesn't work best for you.

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11. Comment #433008 by MCrnigoj on November 18, 2009 at 9:51 pm

SLOVENIJA GRE NAPREJ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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12. Comment #433010 by Twatsworth on November 18, 2009 at 9:55 pm

avatarI thought it was that Richard found the character Sherlock Holmes preposterous. The reason being that Holmes was, for instance, perfectly content not knowing (he didn't care) whether the earth is round or flat. It was probably just a bit of humor from Arthur Conan Doyle, but I also remember reading bits like that and thinking "wow, that's silly."

I don't know what you mean by "bits like that". As far as I can remember there is only one time in the whole collection in which Holmes' lack of general knowledge is emphasized. That's in A Study in Scarlet, the very first story, in which Watson is as outraged as you by Holmes' indifference to astronomy. Conan Doyle essentially contradicts himself, because in later stories Holmes is portrayed as having extensive general knowledge.

Anyway, how do you know why Richard finds Sherlock Holmes preposterous? I get the feeling Richard is unfairly biased against Conan Doyle simply because Conan Doyle became a bit of a crackpot later in life (after essentially his whole family had died, many of them being slaughtered in WW1).

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13. Comment #433012 by Sciros on November 18, 2009 at 10:00 pm

I don't know what you mean by "bits like that".

What I mean is I don't remember all of the Holmes stories that well so I figured I'd throw in "bits like that" in case I missed any other examples of Holmes being silly.

Anyway, how do you know why Richard finds Sherlock Holmes preposterous?

I seem to recall him saying something like that. But I may be remembering things wrong altogether.

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14. Comment #433014 by Twatsworth on November 18, 2009 at 10:05 pm

What I mean is I don't remember all of the Holmes stories that well so I figured I'd throw in "bits like that" in case I missed any other examples of Holmes being silly.

I seem to recall him saying something like that. But I may be remembering things wrong altogether.

Fair enough.

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15. Comment #433018 by Steve Zara on November 18, 2009 at 10:18 pm

This was an inspiring and magnificent talk. There are others who promote science and evolution, such as Myers and Coyne, and they do a great job, but they come nowhere near Richard's depth of explanation, his skill with metaphor, his poetry.

However, I would like to add a few comments. Not to sound critical of this talk, but because I think they may be of interest.

Life is quite possible on a planet not in orbit around a star. This is discussed by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart in Evolving the Alien (2002). A proto-planet the size of Earth if ejected from a solar system early enough would have a deep atmosphere of hydrogen. That would provide insulation. The heat of formation of the planet along with the energy from radioactive decay could keep the surface of such a planet above the melting point of water for billions of years. There are many more places where life could arise and evolve than used to be thought. Many more places where Darwinian evolution can give rise to complexity.

And, I am afraid, I still remain unconvinced about Natural Selection being an improbability pump, because I think the supposed statistical improbability of the results of evolution is an illusion, as (I think) evolution is a statistical inevitability in a universe like ours. To me, this is like saying that chemistry is an improbability pump because ordered crystals form as a result of thermodynamics.

I would prefer to describe Natural Selection as a remover of the mountain of perceived improbability. It shatters our illusions about what is improbable, because we see that Mount Improbable was never a mountain at all.

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16. Comment #433025 by blitz442 on November 18, 2009 at 10:43 pm

Steve

And, I am afraid, I still remain unconvinced about Natural Selection being an improbability pump, because I think the supposed statistical improbability of the results of evolution is an illusion, as (I think) evolution is a statistical inevitability in a universe like ours. To me, this is like saying that chemistry is an improbability pump because ordered crystals form as a result of thermodynamics

Steve, are you sure that you are using the correct definition of improbability here?

Lifeforms are complex things. A complex thing in this sense is defined as something that has some quality, specifiable in advance, that is highly unlikely to have been acquired by random chance alone. It is statistically improbable (throw molecules together randomly, over and over again, for a trillion years, and you'd still probably never get anything as complex as a mitochondria).

If then see a planet teeming with lifeforms, we have to posit some mechanism that produces these lifeforms in spite of their extreme improbability.

Improbability here means "unlikely to have occurred by chance alone", not "unlikely to have occurred at all".

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17. Comment #433035 by Jiten on November 18, 2009 at 11:34 pm

A proto-planet the size of Earth if ejected from a solar system early enough would have a deep atmosphere of hydrogen

Surely the Hydrogen would escape from an Earth-sized planet, because its molecules go faster than the escape velocity of an Earth-sized planet?

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18. Comment #433038 by Steve Zara on November 18, 2009 at 11:42 pm

Comment #433025 by blitz442

If then see a planet teeming with lifeforms, we have to posit some mechanism that produces these lifeforms in spite of their extreme improbability.?

There is only apparent improbability when you look at the lifeforms in isolation. When you look at the lifeforms together with their environment and the entropy produced by the lifeforms, the improbability vanishes. Natural Selection can produce seeming improbability because life increases the entropy of its environment.

It's related to the formation of ordered structures like crystals. They seem improbable, but crystallisation produces heat. The overall situation after the crystals have formed is decreased local entropy within the crystals, but significantly increased entropy generally as a result of the heat.

My view is this: life and evolution aren't improbable, because they can be considered as a sort of super-crystallisation: an increase of order (improbability) more than countered by a decrease of order as a result of life's activity. So, the overall situation is more probable than not.

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19. Comment #433039 by Steve Zara on November 18, 2009 at 11:47 pm

Comment #433035 by Jiten

Surely the Hydrogen would escape from an Earth-sized planet, because its molecules go faster than the escape velocity of an Earth-sized planet?

No, not at the low temperatures of interstellar space. What you say is only true for a planet in Earth-equivalent orbit around a sun like ours, where the upper atmosphere would be relatively warm.

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20. Comment #433040 by blitz442 on November 18, 2009 at 11:50 pm

Steve

My view is this: life and evolution aren't improbable because they can be considered as a sort of super-crystallisation: an increase of order (improbability) more than countered by a decrease of order as a result of life's activity. So, the overall situation is more probable than not.

Remember Paley’s comparison of the watch on the beach and rocks? He was ok with the possibility of the rock always existing, or perhaps coming together through a random concoction of motion and material, but was certainly not ok with these explanations for the watch. It was a valuable insight and distinction. There are so many ways for a rock to be, because it has no specific function. Same with your snowflake. The mundane laws of chemistry and physics and properties of matter and energy can account for them (rock and snowflake). The mundane laws of chemistry and physics could never account for a watch or a snail. Only a designer or some non-random process could do it.


Some degree of order does not = complexity if we include in our definition of complexity the requirement that it must have some function (specifiable in advance). A snail is improbable compared to your snowflake because the process that produced a particular snowflake (chance) could never in a trillion years produce a snail.

I think it’s a mistake to blur the distinction between natural processes that produce complex things and processes or properties of matter and energy that could never, by themselves, produce complex things by saying that natural selection will inevitably result in complex life.

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21. Comment #433043 by Steve Zara on November 19, 2009 at 12:05 am

Comment #433040 by blitz442

There are so many ways for a rock to be

There is such variety of life.

The mundane laws of chemistry and physics and properties of matter and energy can account for them (rock and snowflake). The mundane laws of chemistry and physics could never account for a watch or a snail. Only a designer or some non-random process could do it.

The mundane laws of chemistry and physics aren't random. They certainly do produce a snail, as biology adds no "magic".

I think it’s a mistake to blur the distinction between natural processes that produce complex things and processes or properties of matter and energy that could never, by themselves, produce complex things by saying that natural selection will inevitably result in complex life.

I think that blurring is essential to the understanding of what is going on.

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22. Comment #433044 by ev-love on November 19, 2009 at 12:06 am

Splendid!

But did I really hear Richard say "rising to a crescendo"?

ev-love

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23. Comment #433055 by debridement on November 19, 2009 at 12:53 am

Steve,
Post #15 is excellent! I've felt the same way for years but have never been able to articulate it so well.

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24. Comment #433057 by Steve Zara on November 19, 2009 at 1:11 am

Comment #433055 by debridement

I have been fortunate enough to have had a discussion with Richard about this on this site. I still think his metaphor of Mount Improbable is important, but I don't think it tells the whole story.

My view is this: we live in a universe of physics and chemistry, governed by thermodynamics. Biology adds no new laws. If the appearance of life and the evolution of ever more complex forms is compatible with the second law of thermodynamics (that entropy increases), then, unless we want to add some special extra laws, it must be driven by thermodynamics. There is a lot more I could say about this, but thread is not the place. I don't want to distract from comments on this wonderful talk.

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25. Comment #433065 by Kiwi on November 19, 2009 at 1:38 am

Comment #433057 by Steve Zara
Quick question Steve, are there any implications for thermodynamics and entropy when a system is travelling at relativistic speeds ?

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26. Comment #433077 by quaredunt on November 19, 2009 at 2:19 am

Even though he was reading from a screen you could feel the emotion behind what he was saying.
Grandeur!

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27. Comment #433083 by blitz442 on November 19, 2009 at 3:14 am

Steve

There is such variety of life.

Yes, but each life form is highly specialized to a particular way of making a living.

The mundane laws of chemistry and physics aren't random. They certainly do produce a snail, as biology adds no "magic".

My view is this: we live in a universe of physics and chemistry, governed by thermodynamics. Biology adds no new laws. If the appearance of life and the evolution of ever more complex forms is compatible with the second law of thermodynamics (that entropy increases), then, unless we want to add some special extra laws, it must be driven by thermodynamics

Of course biology must adhere to thermodynamics (how could it not?). But that is different than saying "it's all just thermodynamics then, biology adds nothing".


Surely you recognize that trying to explain biology solely in terms of the fundamental principles of physics and chemistry is inadequate; it would be like trying to explain the workings of a subway train in terms of quantum mechanics.

I think that Dennett might call you a greedy reductionist, in that you seem to reject or diminish the importance of mechanisms that operate at levels above the fundamental laws of physics, particularly mechanisms that speed up the process of natural selection. As I'm sure your aware, he calls these mechanisms cranes; sex is a good crane, so is the Baldwin effect.

I have been fortunate enough to have had a discussion with Richard about this on this site. I still think his metaphor of Mount Improbable is important, but I don't think it tells the whole story.

Where is this thread? I am very curious to see what he said about your use of the term improbability. I suspect that your (probably correct) observation that the formation of life is likely in the Universe does not defeat the notion that it is (statistically) improbable.

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28. Comment #433084 by outwitted by fish on November 19, 2009 at 3:22 am

Steve Zara:

A proto-planet the size of Earth if ejected from a solar system early enough would have a deep atmosphere of hydrogen. That would provide insulation. The heat of formation of the planet along with the energy from radioactive decay could keep the surface of such a planet above the melting point of water for billions of years.

I'm intrigued by the suggestion (although not at all sure that the surface of the planet is the place for life to begin.) Why, though, would hydrogen be insulation? The energy loss to space would necessarily be radiant, and even a dense layer of H2 would be fairly transparent in almost all of the infrared spectrum. (H2 is not particularly associative, and there's only one stretching mode and one rotational mode for IR absorbtion.)

Anyway, assuming this putative planet had reasonable quantities of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur, I'd expect the atmosphere to be pretty heavily laden in hydrocarbons, ammonia, CO2, H2S...

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29. Comment #433085 by yyy on November 19, 2009 at 3:36 am

Awesome talk as usual.

'is it possible that two independent origins of life could both have hit upon the same 64 word code?'

One thing I've thought about (could be wrong): Replicating ice crystals from Alaska are simple enough to be equally compatible with ice crystals from Greenland, despite their separate origins. So perhaps the very first (absolute lowest level) life replicators could have had multiple origins, yet each origin might have been simple enough to have the same equivalent pattern, like ice crystals, and thus be able to intermingle. Maybe the 64 word code could have been a higher level construction that arose from multiple replicator origins in such a way?

'evolution by natural selection is the only process we know whereby simple beginnings can give rise to complex results'

One other process that has intrigued me about as much as evolution is the behavior of simple programs (cellular automata etc). Only 8 simple rules counter-intuitively create a complex pattern here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110
And perhaps this shell's pattern might be predominantly fueled by such a 'simple program' rather than evolution?:
http://moodle.epfl.ch/file.php/216/WebsitePics/Textile_cone.JPG
(The cellular automata framework seems to match a shell that is created 'line by line' by the animal (if I'm even correct that that's indeed how the animals make the shells)).

I wonder if earth's evolutionary history ever featured a creature that used wasp tactics, only victimized more sophisticated/intelligent (non-insect) organisms (like the movie alien, heh). The immune system as an analogy for the mind might spark some insight, but I don't know much about either. Also I have a naive understanding of thermodynamics/heat death/the universe in general, but it seems like gravity constantly sucks energy back together (it attracts light, and mass, and the latter gets crushed which creates energy?). Seems like gravity would continue to function and make energy in heat death, or I could be wrong.

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30. Comment #433108 by Enlightenme.. on November 19, 2009 at 7:02 am

I think Darwin's "Endless forms" was 'merely' his way of marvelling at the vastness of Mendel space.

If only he could have known of his contemporary's work.

The big wonder for me is the unbroken circa 4 billion year chain - no comets big or direct enough to extinguish all life.

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31. Comment #433112 by Steve Zara on November 19, 2009 at 7:50 am

Comment #433084 by outwitted by fish

I'm intrigued by the suggestion (although not at all sure that the surface of the planet is the place for life to begin.) Why, though, would hydrogen be insulation? The energy loss to space would necessarily be radiant, and even a dense layer of H2 would be fairly transparent in almost all of the infrared spectrum. (H2 is not particularly associative, and there's only one stretching mode and one rotational mode for IR absorbtion.)

I have no idea. I'm not an expert in this, but Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart are respected scientists so presumably have some reason for suggesting this is feasible.

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32. Comment #433113 by Steve Zara on November 19, 2009 at 8:09 am

Comment #433083 by blitz442

I'm not saying biology is only chemistry and physics. What I am saying is that biology, and whatever it involves, can't magically go against thermodynamics. This is nothing to do with reductionism.

Imagine a very pure solution of something compound that can crystallise. Solutions tend not to spontaneously crystallise: they need some disturbance or impurity to start things going. Once that appears, localised order appears while at the same time giving off heat, so entropy as a whole increases. You can end up with amazing structures that look designed, but there is no special crystallising force, no intention behind the crystals. If you don't consider the heat given off, you might think that there is some hill of improbability that has to be climbed to get to the formation of crystals, but as the situation after formation has more entropy, the crystallisation was inevitable, given the initial disturbance. Of course, there are countless ways that the crystals could have formed - all sorts of shapes and arrangements.

Now, look at life and evolution. Species don't spontaneously appear. Something like the origin of life is needed to get things going, but then evolution is inevitable. Various chemicals are placed into the complex and ordered arrangement we call life, at an increasing pace. You end up with amazing structures that look designed. If you look at the life forms alone, and don't consider the entropy it looks like there is some mountain of improbability that has to have been climbed, but if you do take the overall entropy into account, then evolution into more complex forms was inevitable after the initial origin. Of course, there are countless forms that life can take.

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33. Comment #433134 by ridelo on November 19, 2009 at 11:12 am

Maybe someday in the future we do a kind of Urey-Miller experiment where we use he right ingredients to start replicating molecules and slap our foreheads exclamating: "Of course!"
But maybe the reaction vessel will have to be as big as Earth itself.

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34. Comment #433138 by Twatsworth on November 19, 2009 at 12:21 pm

You end up with amazing structures that look designed. If you look at the life forms alone, and don't consider the entropy it looks like there is some mountain of improbability that has to have been climbed, but if you do take the overall entropy into account, then evolution into more complex forms was inevitable after the initial origin. Of course, there are countless forms that life can take.

Steve Zara is talking nonsense, not for the first time. The evolution of complex entities clearly wasn't inevitable from entropic considerations only (and if he wasn't implying that, he isn't saying anything interesting, and his last few posts are worth little). In almost every planetary system in the universe you have essentially the same entropic situation as here in the Solar System: it can be approximated as an isolated system, and therefore its entropy is increasing. Nevertheless, very few planets are seen to contain life. Obviously there are lots of important factors other than entropy. In particular, you need (1) a planetary atmosphere that supports life, and of course (2) replicators.

(1) does not seem to be very improbable, as Mars and other planets we've observed could in principle contain some kind of life. (2), however, is anybody's guess. It could be that the right entropic, thermal and chemical situations are relatively easy to come by, while replicators are staggeringly improbable.

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35. Comment #433147 by InYourFaceNewYorker on November 19, 2009 at 12:56 pm

Is Richard going to be on the radio after Midday GMT, or EST? Did I miss it?

Julie

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36. Comment #433148 by ridelo on November 19, 2009 at 12:58 pm

34. Comment #433138 by Twatsworth on November 19, 2009 at 12:21 pm
while replicators are staggeringly improbable.

Does this mean you need the hand of God?

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37. Comment #433150 by Twatsworth on November 19, 2009 at 1:02 pm

Does this mean you need the hand of God?

Yes.

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38. Comment #433159 by Steve Zara on November 19, 2009 at 1:55 pm

Comment #433138 by Twatsworth

Your comment has little to do with the point I am making.

I am not saying that life is inevitable, just that once it gets started, the development of every more complexity is, I suspect, likely.

Let's go back to the comparison with crystal formation. Do we talk about a mountain of improbability that has to be climbed for those often quite complex structures to be formed?

We don't. But according to your view, we can't talk about spontaneous formations of crystals in any context because not everywhere in the universe is suitable for the formation of crystals!

The environments that are suitable for life may be very rare, but that does not mean my argument doesn't hold.

I completely understand the idea behind Mount Improbable, and I think it is very powerful. But I think it is also useful and powerful to look at the whole landscape of probability around the mountain. To extend the metaphor without hopefully making things too confusing or inaccurate - because of the increased entropy resulting from life, the whole landscape sinks downwards into "probable" while the mountain of improbability rises.

Life is a good way to increase entropy. The more successful an organism is, the more food and resources it uses, and the more entropy it will produce.

I find the possible relationships between Natural Selection and thermodynamics very interesting indeed.

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39. Comment #433160 by locutus7 on November 19, 2009 at 2:05 pm

I, for one, violently dissent from Mr. Twatsworth's stance as I find Steve Zara's commentary most insightful. My thought: improbable does not mean impossible; no god required.

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40. Comment #433161 by InYourFaceNewYorker on November 19, 2009 at 2:07 pm

Ok, clearly I missed Richard on the radio. When was he on?

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41. Comment #433162 by blitz442 on November 19, 2009 at 2:21 pm

Steve

What I am saying is that biology, and whatever it involves, can't magically go against thermodynamics

Who ever said that it could? Biology must adhere to physics and chemistry (in the end, it uses nothing more than the laws of physics).

If you don't consider the heat given off, you might think that there is some hill of improbability that has to be climbed to get to the formation of crystals....

Again, I don't think that, in the context of the "Improbability Pump", that the word improbability means "unlikely to form at all." Crystallization is a form of self-organization that forms some neat structures, but living forms need a different explanation than just self-organization. Mountain lions are the end product of billions of years of cumulative selection; they don't self organize in a few minutes like salt crystals.

Improbability means "unlikely to form by chance alone", or "unlikely to just self-organize". We need a different process to explain life (which is still ultimately dependent on and consistent with physics/chemistry).

So life, even complex life, may be likely in the Universe, but it is still statistically improbable.

Of course, there are countless ways that the crystals could have formed - all sorts of shapes and arrangements.

Of course, there are countless forms that life can take.

This is where I think that you are making a false comparison. Crystals and life are different in this crucial respect - crystals have no function specifiable in advance. There are countless ways for a junkpile to form, but that in no way means we can use the same process to describe the formation of complex life as we did for the formation of a junkpile.

Even though life may take many forms, if you look at each individual organism you will see that it has specific functions (it runs, swims, hunts, etc). Of all the possible combinations of the molecules that make up a bat, there are very few that will actually function as a bat. This makes the appearance of any life form statistically improbable, in the sense that chance or self-organization alone could never form the molecules of bat in a direction that does anything useful like make a living.

In contrast, to speak of a "non-functioning crystal" would be like talking about a "non-functioning rock". Crystals don't really appear designed anymore than rocks do.

You also made reference earlier to the laws of chemistry and physics not being random. With regard to crystal formation they are random in this sense - there is nothing in crystallization that tends toward "improvement" (just like even if mutuation is non-random, there is nothing in mutation alone that tends toward the adaptive improvement of the organism). Again, the crystals are not statistically improbable in the same way a butterfly is.

Bottom line, I think that we are using improbability in completely different ways.

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42. Comment #433164 by God fearing Atheist on November 19, 2009 at 2:41 pm

I quite like Steve's analogy with crystallisation, but I don't dislike Dawkins "improbability pump".

I picture a ratchet being rattled about. The random jerks are evenly distributed, but the ratched moves slowly, but relentlessly, in one direction because of shape of the ratchet. If the ratched didn't have asymmetric geometry it would be improbable for it to move far by random noise. However, its asymmetry "pumps" it. The mechanism is an "improbability pump". Evolution works in a similar way.

Anyway, I'm not going to get too anal about it - they are only metaphores - take 'em or leave 'em!

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43. Comment #433167 by Mark Jones on November 19, 2009 at 2:55 pm

Comment #433161 by InYourFaceNewYorker

He was just on Jeremy Vine on BBC Radio 2:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00nwwgf

The link will only work for British listeners, I think. Starts @ around 8mins.

Other Comments by Mark Jones

44. Comment #433168 by Sandra S on November 19, 2009 at 3:02 pm

Comment #433167 by Mark Jones

Are you sure? Because it's working for me and I'm from Sweden.

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45. Comment #433171 by Mark Jones on November 19, 2009 at 3:07 pm

Comment #433168 by Sandra S

No, I'm not (sure); but as a license payer I demand recompense!

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46. Comment #433173 by Twatsworth on November 19, 2009 at 3:13 pm

I am not saying that life is inevitable, just that once it gets started, the development of every more complexity is, I suspect, likely.

If that's just what you wanted to say, then why bother? Richard Dawkins has never denied that complexity is likely once life gets started. Quite the opposite. Nobody in this thread has denied it.

Let's go back to the comparison with crystal formation. Do we talk about a mountain of improbability that has to be climbed for those often quite complex structures to be formed?

That's because crystal structures aren't very complex in the sense Dawkins means. The only meaningful way in which crystals are complex is that they have low entropy. Entropy is not a good measure of complexity.

Personally, I prefer Daniel Dennett's way of putting it. To get Design, you need natural selection. I prefer talking about Designedness instead of complexity. The creationists might try to exploit this, but I don't see why we should allow our discourse to be stunted by a relatively small following of ragtag ignoramuses.

I completely understand the idea behind Mount Improbable, and I think it is very powerful. But I think it is also useful and powerful to look at the whole landscape of probability around the mountain. To extend the metaphor without hopefully making things too confusing or inaccurate - because of the increased entropy resulting from life, the whole landscape sinks downwards into "probable" while the mountain of improbability rises.

This is nothing more than a confused equivocation between different senses of complexity and improbability. Clearly Dawkins would not hold that the emergence of life is improbable, given replicators and the conditions on Earth. Only a creationist, or some sort of interventionist theist or deist, would believe any such thing.

That is exactly why Dawkins takes pains to explain the kind of complexity he is referring to. He defines complexity very much in the Shannon-Weaver information-theoretical way. Would crystals be complex according to this definition? Yes, by a naive interpretation, any boringly regular structure would be an extremely complex entity. However, if you're clever, you will soon realize that a regular structure such as a crystal can be completely specified very easily indeed. Introductory solid state physics teaches students the simple notation for representing crystals. Alas, there is no such notation available to furnish a complete specification of an animal's genome. That contains rather more information than a crystal.

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47. Comment #433174 by Sandra S on November 19, 2009 at 3:14 pm

Comment #433171 by Mark Jones

That's okay, we can compensate you by letting you listen to the swedish public radio.

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48. Comment #433176 by Mark Jones on November 19, 2009 at 3:29 pm

Comment #433174 by Sandra S

You're too kind. Now, where's Google translator....

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49. Comment #433181 by Newswede on November 19, 2009 at 3:52 pm

The people who have worked hard at getting a precise definition of complexity are computer scientists. They are still arguing about details, but one idea that is widely accepted is that the complexity of some given sequence is the shortest sequence you could have that enables you to construct the given sequence. For example, "101010101010101010101010101010101010" could be replaced by "18 copies of 10", which is shorter. Notice that by such a definition, the complexity of a billion repetitions of 10 is not much different than the complexity of 18 repetitions. That's the sense in which a crystal is not very complex.

For biology, though, we should probably also take account that some random DNA sequences are complex according to that definition, but if they aren't actually used for anything, they don't contribute to the complexity of the organism. In particular, "18 copies of 10, then 1,000,000 unused random letters" is a short description of a very long string. That's the sense in which a room full of gas is not complex.

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50. Comment #433182 by root2squared on November 19, 2009 at 3:54 pm

I have a Mac, and I think it's the superior computer.

High five! You are correct. Once you go Mac you never go back.

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