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Frustrated with science

russel said:
If you read Richard Dawkins book “The Selfish Gene” I don’t think you would, it does an excellent job of explaining it.
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I should probably read it and I'm sure thousands of biologists know rather more than little old me on the matter (wait for it...) BUT the sheer complexity and variety of life intuitively seems too sophisticated to be just a product of natural selection etc, even allowing for billions of years of evolution. I'm certain though that there can be no greater example of the Dunning-kruger Effect than mankind's opinion of itself! There may well be aliens out there who regard all our smart phones, computers and moon landings as no more advanced than we do the monkey opening nuts by smashing them with a rock that I mentioned earlier...
 
P.S. If evolution through natural selection isn't how the origin and diversity of life came to be, there's a lot of "bad" design choices overcome by brilliantly successive bodges that an omnipotent creator would need to explain.

Humans have exactly seven cervical vertebrae. Giraffes also have exactly seven cervical vertebrae. If you were designing a giraffe from scratch, instead of modifying existing mammalian designs (a very superficial account of what natural selection does over many generations*), why go with seven ginormous cervical vertebrae instead of simply more vertebrae to get the length you need?

The interesting thing is that the limitations of natural selection provide much evidence that natural selection is the mechanism of evolution.

* Natural selection doesn't modify anything. It selects among available options that confer survival and reproductive advantages to an organism.
 
Arkless Electronics said:
I should probably read it and I'm sure thousands of biologists know rather more than little old me on the matter (wait for it...) BUT the sheer complexity and variety of life intuitively seems too sophisticated to be just a product of natural selection etc, even allowing for billions of years of evolution..
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Random changes selected by varying situations can quickly generate compexity. Add in a few billion years and a few hundred galaxies.

Combine a vast number of events with exponential growths and you quickly get remarkable results.

So it isn't jus a billion years, but N to the billion'th power ways to find what you can build that survives. No problem for a universe.
 
For me, the real question is: Does life *have* to be based on the same biochemistry as on Earth? e.g. No worlds with life based on different raw main materials to CHON or with, say, Methane instead of water?

When I started working with astronomers it was still SF to regard the galaxy as having bucketloads of planets. Now we've found loads. So the next challenge is to see if any have life... of some kind.
 
Jim,

That's an interesting question.

I think the one thing we can say with certainty is that for life to exist, its chemistry has to be complex, which narrows the options considerably.

Organic chemistry is simply much more replete with possibilities than all of inorganic chemistry combined, so that means life elsewhere (if it exists) is likely to be based on carbon compounds. Maybe silicon-based lifeforms are also possible, but that's one I'll leave for the Horta to comment on.

Joe
 
Arkless Electronics said:
BUT the sheer complexity and variety of life intuitively seems too sophisticated to be just a product of natural selection etc, even allowing for billions of years of evolution.
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One of the ways that those who doubt evolution as being too complicated to have happened in the available time frame is to say that it only took "billions of years", as if it's quite along time - it isn't, it's an absolutely unimaginably vast period of time, and that is just a single billion!!
 
Joe P said:
If evolution through natural selection isn't how the origin and diversity of life came to be, there's a lot of "bad" design choices overcome by brilliantly successive bodges that an omnipotent creator would need to explain.
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That sounds a lot like a typical software system of moderate complexity.
 
mansr,

In a way it is. If you were to design something from scratch you'd likely do it differently than if you had no choice but to use existing code (or sequences of base pairs in DNA, in the case of natural selection) and bodge the code to do something new or something better.

Genetic mutation and recombination give you the new code, and it's up to natural selection to test it and incorporate what works better.

Joe
 
Joe P said:
Jim,

That's an interesting question.

I think the one thing we can say with certainty is that for life to exist, its chemistry has to be complex, which narrows the options considerably.

Organic chemistry is simply much more replete with possibilities than all of inorganic chemistry combined, so that means life elsewhere (if it exists) is likely to be based on carbon compounds. Maybe silicon-based lifeforms are also possible, but that's one I'll leave for the Horta to comment on.

Joe
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NO CLUE I
 
Joe P said:
Jez,

You're doing that thing you accuse cable peeps of doing. :)

Joe
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No, I'm not. I think I made it pretty clear it was just the "musings out loud" of someone with no academic knowledge of biology, a "what if", and that there are thousands who know vastly more than myself on this and that I have no doubt that I'm probably wrong:) Now if I'd said that obviously Darwin IS wrong cos it doesn't fit in with my layman's understanding of biology and that all these biologists with their microscopes and petri dishes are just a load of measurebators who don't know what they are talking about THEN I would be "doing that thing you accuse cable peeps of doing":)

As to the possibility of intelligent life on other planets and therefore the possibility that they may have bio-engineered life on earth billions of years ago, possibly at the primordial slime stage, or maybe in adding the spark of sentience, then there can surely be no more than sci fi speculation until/unless "little green men" answer our calls.
I believe there is one hypothesis that life ("bacteria"/whatever) may have come to earth on/in "space debris" from a planetary collision elsewhere in the universe... which then begs the question of how did life start there!
It seems vastly more likely than "god" and yet millions are willing to loose their lives or take others such is their belief that "god is on our side"!
Maybe Erich Von Daniken is receiving his Nobel prize right now on a parallel world of the multiverse:rolleyes:

And that last paragraph was of course "musings out loud" as well of course!
 
Vietnam seems to have acquitted itself well, if only we had acted so quickly. If only boris hadn't been on holiday, if only hed attended the meetings if only it didnt suit his hedge fund mates...

They needed no fancy science
 
Jez,

Just ribbin' ya, man. Electronics is your bag. Evolution is mine. :)

The problem I have with a complex thing being responsible for a simpler thing is that the explanation of how the simpler thing came to be doesn't address where the more complex thing came from. (That likely needed some commas.)

Joe
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
For me, the real question is: Does life *have* to be based on the same biochemistry as on Earth? e.g. No worlds with life based on different raw main materials to CHON or with, say, Methane instead of water?
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18vfvd.jpg
 
sq225917 said:
Vietnam seems to have acquitted itself well, if only we had acted so quickly. If only boris hadn't been on holiday, if only hed attended the meetings if only it didnt suit his hedge fund mates...

They needed no fancy science
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Hey in my own very humble opinion my post 96 was the most pertinent ever said on pfm :)rolleyes:) but as it basically blames capitalism for the whole sorry mess then obviously it can't even be taken seriously and MUST be the rantings of a lunatic! It has not escaped my attention that anything I ever say on those lines, blaming capitalism, greed, the markets etc gets no likes and is never quoted... it's the unmentionable!
 
Martin,

Be thankful you're not a hydra because if you were you'd be eating, barfing and crapping out of the same orifice!

Joe
 
Joe P said:
P.S. If evolution through natural selection isn't how the origin and diversity of life came to be, there's a lot of "bad" design choices overcome by brilliantly successive bodges that an omnipotent creator would need to explain.

Humans have exactly seven cervical vertebrae. Giraffes also have exactly seven cervical vertebrae. If you were designing a giraffe from scratch, instead of modifying existing mammalian designs (a very superficial account of what natural selection does over many generations*), why go with seven ginormous cervical vertebrae instead of simply more vertebrae to get the length you need?
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Listen, God only had 7 days to get the design right , you know? That's for everything, vertebrates, shellfish, the lot. There's only so many tools in the toolbag. He can't be expected to get it ALL right.
 
martin clark said:
That idea scaled-up to most starfish too...
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Yeah, but the playground/sewage outfall concurrence thing is a town planning and installation issue, not the basic design.

OK, maybe the hydras and the starfish, and to a lesser extent the birds, but y'know, like I said the guy only had 7 days for the full bag.
 
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