Please keep theology out of the discussion, per SMP custom.



I suppose quantum parallel universes along with the anthropic principle could explain such an unlikely happenstance as the origin of species. In the uniform distribution over the unit interval of real numbers, every outcome has probability zero but none is impossible and some outcome must happen. So in a continuum of parallel universes an unlikely event like 1 in 20^70 is infinitely large compared to the zero probabilities of each parallel universe, even though each parallel universe actually does happen.

Nevertheless, I think they're on to something. I've posted similar skepticism about Darwinism here in the past.


PairTheBoard

I thought you wanted to keep theology out of it.

The existence of poodles is all the proof I need for evolution.

Reached about 17mins

It's being pointed out that for speciation the number of combinations for a new protein are mega huge while the number of viable solutions is minute. Do they address similarity because if the new viable bits are very similar to previously existing bits then that's arguably a much easier problem for darwinism.

To go with the monkies at typewriter analogy. Mega difference if it's monkies randomly hammering away at typewriters vs monkies grabbiing from a bag of words, phrases and books that already make some sort of sense.

That is the problem many skeptics of evolution have - they think it’s all random. In reality, there is a significant no random component to it, namely natural selection. The next generation of organisms doesn’t start with random crap that might or might not be favorable, but instead with genetic features already proven to be beneficial.

In analogy with the monkeys and typewriters thing, let’s update it and give them computer keyboards to pound on. Now, since we have a computer, we can program the manuscript we want the monkey to type. When the monkey types the right letter in the right position, the computer locks that letter in place and allows the monkey to retype any letters that were wrong. The question is: how long would it take a monkey in this situation to reproduce a manuscript?

Let’s make some assumptions. Our manuscript has 50000 words averaging 6 letters each. This means, counting spaces, our manuscript has 350,000 characters. Let’s ignore punctuation, paragraphs and such and give the monkey a keyboard with only the 26 letters and a space bar. The monkey therefore at each position has a 1/27 chance of hitting the right key. Assume the monkey hits one key per second.

Now, after 1 iteration, we expect the monkey to get 12,963 letters right, about 3.7%. After 10 iterations he will now have 110,030 right, 31.4%. That takes about 37 days. He hits 53% after 75 days, 20 iterations. After 102 days he’s got almost 93% of the manuscript nailed down — and at that point it’s likely to make some sense to a reader. After 200 iterations, about 109 days, he’s only wrong on 171 letters, 99.95% correct, and obviously it’s very much recognizable to a reader.

I must say i gave up on the video soon after. They seemed to jumped straight from mutation only random search to design and then started talking about good and evil.