[~ot] why is programming so fun?

[Tower Ty]

I see who the one word poster is now !



Gregor Richards Wrote:

> BCS wrote:
> > Reply to Simen,
> > 
> >> Chris Wright Wrote:
> >>
> >>> BCS wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> The chances of life happening by chance are something like that, if
> >>>> not worse. You could probably calculated a relative number for it
> >>>> with quantum physics and/or information theory and/or string theory
> >>>> or some such. IIRC there is a theory about how much info can be in a
> >>>> given volume.
> >>>>
> >>> I don't think anyone has come close to describing the odds of
> >>> abiogenesis.
> >>>
> >> I did some fun calculations after being given a book by Jehovah's
> >> Witnesses, as I've always been of the opinion that life being created
> >> by some higher being is less probable than it occuring naturally.
> >>
> >> Way I figured was, I get 1 cubic centimetre of the simplest,
> >> carbon-based, self-replicating molecules, on this planet of 1 trillion
> >> cubic kilometers (one cubic centimetre was chosen as some arbitrary
> >> amount that might come into being by chance). Not by any chance a big
> >> chunk, but is it enough for life to survive? Let's first see how many
> >> self-replicating molecules we can fit into my small cube - 1.6
> >> quintillion. That ain't half bad. (Actually, I think the number was
> >> 1000 times bigger, but I don't remember the name of that number
> >> [Hexillion?], plus you can think of it as a bit of safety :p)
> >>
> >> Now, spread that evenly across the world (258 billion square
> >> kilometers), and you get 162 such molecule for every square meter.
> >> With enough resources nearby, I'd give it a fairly good chance of
> >> survival.
> >>
> > 
> > Someone once told me that if you take all the ways that you can assemble 
> > the parts of the simplest form of life and put them in once place, the 
> > ball would be something like the size of earth. (I havn't checked the 
> > math or anything like that)
> > 
> > 
> 
> I love that all arguments against natural abiogenesis come down to an 
> argument from ignorance. The fact is that we haven't got the foggiest 
> bit of a clue what the entire range of things that could have 
> /potentially/ formed life are, we just happen to have been formed from a 
> particular set of amino acids. We like to believe that only amino acids, 
> or even only the set of amino acids life on Earth are based on, could 
> form life, but that's just stupid. Given the uncountably many planets in 
> the universe, life has probably come into existence and evolved in ways 
> we could never remotely predict, and idiots on their planets are saying 
> "The chances that a simple life based on hexavalent chromium would form 
> naturally are so unlikely, we must have been created by some higher 
> intelligence!" As it turns out, when you consider your very low but 
> extremely ignorant statistic given the number of planets in the 
> universe, and the potentially huge number of possible ways life could 
> form (a number we can't even begin to fathom), it turns into 
> 99.9999999999%. Unfortunately, the general populous doesn't understand 
> statistics even in the slightest, and so they think "Wow, given the 
> extremely low odds that a protozoan would appear by random chance, we 
> must have been created by a higher power!" Idiots.
> 
>   - Gregor Richards