My understanding is that all DNA based creatures (and probably RNA) are related. That is to say, life has evolved on Earth only once. Given that the planet has been able to support life for at least 4 billion years, that makes the development of life an extremely are and improbable event. If it was routine given the necessary conditions, we would expect life to have evolved several or many times.

Does this suggest to you the possibility of an intelligent designer? What’s more likely – that life was created, or that it developed spontaneously. The likelihood of the latter is of the order of one in 4 billion. What are the odds for a creator? I’m not talking a deistic God, but something along the lines that we exist in a created simulation.

• Does this suggest to you the possibility of an intelligent designer?

That just moves the question of “how did life begin?” to another location and doesn’t really solve anything…

pesce.del.giorno said:

My understanding is that all DNA based creatures (and probably RNA) are related. That is to say, life has evolved on Earth only once.

That doesn’t necessarily follow, for two reasons:

a) It could be that life arose several times but most of these events did not result in lifeforms that are still with us today. This would be hard to test.

b) It could be that life arose several times, resulting in several primitive forms that later merged, each form playing a different role in cellular life. There is some evidence supporting this idea.

furious said:

• Does this suggest to you the possibility of an intelligent designer?

That just moves the question of “how did life begin?” to another location and doesn’t really solve anything…

I’m not putting this idea forward as an answer to the mystery of the cosmos – just a suggestion that postulating a creator may be more rational that postulating that life arose spontaneously.

I have heard it argued that the probability that we exist in simulation is pretty high – maybe as much as 30%

If we are in a simulation I wonder if that opens up the possibility of hacking the code

• just a suggestion that postulating a creator may be more rational that postulating that life arose spontaneously.

But the question remains, how did that creator come to be? If you are truly not considering a deity, then that creator is living and therefore had to have itself been created or spontaneously came into existence. Somewhere along the line life evolved somewhere…

pesce.del.giorno said:

I have heard it argued that the probability that we exist in simulation is pretty high – maybe as much as 30%

Don’t believe everything those white mice tell you.

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

nick bostrom

This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.

ChrispenEvan said:

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

nick bostrom

This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.

I wonder if the human moral code would need to be recoded before we can become post human, perhaps the only method to ensure we don’t destroy ourselves is to change our nature to be less aggressive towards each other, some aggression is needed for survival and if the possibility aliens if they exist are aggressive.

>…./cut/….. improbable event.

I look around, I see structure. Impressive as it is courtesy the structure of my mind, impressions and mental states (the work of human minds) didn’t make most of everything so, and don’t sustain it.

If I take the sea, earth’s atmosphere and all (hydrological cycle) as a masssive random events generator, pumped with thermal cycles (that embed order), the wash of minerals etc, phase transitions, solidifications, stratifications etc, along with the right temperature range and enough time, then obviously given life happened here its probability resolved to 100%.

Where did it resolve from? Possibility space it might be said.

Is possibility space real? Yes.

It’s in the interaction of forces. That they can interact and form a mechanism – the possibility of this and this resulting in that . What is (the structure you see and experience) be a shadow of what is excluded (in a sense).

pesce.del.giorno said:

My understanding is that all DNA based creatures (and probably RNA) are related. That is to say, life has evolved on Earth only once. Given that the planet has been able to support life for at least 4 billion years, that makes the development of life an extremely are and improbable event. If it was routine given the necessary conditions, we would expect life to have evolved several or many times.

What makes you think that like on Earth only evolved once? It may have evolved millions or billions of times, all but one of them being driven extinct by the form that gave rise to all living things.

Another possibility is even more likely. Life evolved millions or even billions of times on Earth but interbred into a single small group of species, one of which became the ancestor of all living things on Earth.

Life on Earth may have only ever evolved once, but you certainly can’t be sure of that.

> like on Earth

Oops

life on Earth.

mollwollfumble said:

pesce.del.giorno said:

My understanding is that all DNA based creatures (and probably RNA) are related. That is to say, life has evolved on Earth only once. Given that the planet has been able to support life for at least 4 billion years, that makes the development of life an extremely are and improbable event. If it was routine given the necessary conditions, we would expect life to have evolved several or many times.

What makes you think that like on Earth only evolved once? It may have evolved millions or billions of times, all but one of them being driven extinct by the form that gave rise to all living things.

Another possibility is even more likely. Life evolved millions or even billions of times on Earth but interbred into a single small group of species, one of which became the ancestor of all living things on Earth.

Life on Earth may have only ever evolved once, but you certainly can’t be sure of that.

pesce.del.giorno said:

What are the odds

1

>If it was routine given the necessary conditions

The necessary conditions might have existed for a relatively short time. And it might not be “routine”.

Bubblecar said:

>If it was routine given the necessary conditions

The necessary conditions might have existed for a relatively short time. And it might not be “routine”.

Perhaps we exist on a very large experimental petri dish that was initially infected with a bacterium. Deities move in mysterious ways.

dv said:

pesce.del.giorno said:

My understanding is that all DNA based creatures (and probably RNA) are related. That is to say, life has evolved on Earth only once.

That doesn’t necessarily follow, for two reasons:

a) It could be that life arose several times but most of these events did not result in lifeforms that are still with us today. This would be hard to test.

b) It could be that life arose several times, resulting in several primitive forms that later merged, each form playing a different role in cellular life. There is some evidence supporting this idea.

Or it could be that the initiation of life is extremely rare, perhaps only occurring a few times in the billions of billions of apparently suitable locations within our visible universe. We can however be certain that it is only in those locations where life exists, and has evolved to a point where at least some beings can have an abstract discussion, where the living beings have an abstract discussion about the probability of life.

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

pesce.del.giorno said:

My understanding is that all DNA based creatures (and probably RNA) are related. That is to say, life has evolved on Earth only once.

That doesn’t necessarily follow, for two reasons:

a) It could be that life arose several times but most of these events did not result in lifeforms that are still with us today. This would be hard to test.

b) It could be that life arose several times, resulting in several primitive forms that later merged, each form playing a different role in cellular life. There is some evidence supporting this idea.

Or it could be that the initiation of life is extremely rare, perhaps only occurring a few times in the billions of billions of apparently suitable locations within our visible universe. We can however be certain that it is only in those locations where life exists, and has evolved to a point where at least some beings can have an abstract discussion, where the living beings have an abstract discussion about the probability of life.

Not disagreeing with you but those points seem to be at right angles to what I was saying. Pesce has presented two statements in his opening remarks as equivalent, and I’ve given two countercases to illustrate that the two statements don’t amount to the same thing.

dv said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

That doesn’t necessarily follow, for two reasons:

a) It could be that life arose several times but most of these events did not result in lifeforms that are still with us today. This would be hard to test.

b) It could be that life arose several times, resulting in several primitive forms that later merged, each form playing a different role in cellular life. There is some evidence supporting this idea.

Or it could be that the initiation of life is extremely rare, perhaps only occurring a few times in the billions of billions of apparently suitable locations within our visible universe. We can however be certain that it is only in those locations where life exists, and has evolved to a point where at least some beings can have an abstract discussion, where the living beings have an abstract discussion about the probability of life.

Not disagreeing with you but those points seem to be at right angles to what I was saying. Pesce has presented two statements in his opening remarks as equivalent, and I’ve given two countercases to illustrate that the two statements don’t amount to the same thing.

That’s OK, I don’t disagree with you either :)

So in summary:

1) The apparent common ancestorship of all living things does not prove that life only started once on Earth.
2) Even if life did start only once on Earth, that is no evidence at all in favour of intelligent design. Indeed, if anything, it is evidence against intelligent design.

furious said:

• Does this suggest to you the possibility of an intelligent designer?

That just moves the question of “how did life begin?” to another location and doesn’t really solve anything…

Correct, it’s unfathomable and that’s the point of it all.