Life or Prison !

[lord_darkside_x]

Oh wow I think Lord_Darkside_X got a little jealous

no... not jealous... just mentioning the other post as well...

[larryjs]

Who is the joker that gave me antipoints because he said "Number two is wrong...proteins don't make DNA. Actually nucleotides (made from a 5-Carbon sugar, phosphate, and a nitrogenous base. Now there are four Nitrogenous Bases for the DNA strand - Adenine, Cytocine, Guanine, and Thymene."

These nitrogenous bases ARE composed of proteins. As I stated in my post The map I laid down was never meant to include every step in the supposed arise of life from inorganic matter. You need to do a little more research before you make comments like that.

Look VictorKaum....I didn't cuss at him. LOL

[Negative]

Originally posted by LarryJs
If I teach a monkey how to hit the keys on a typewriter in a random mannner how long will it take said monkey to produce the complete volume of shakespears works?Don't know?
I will answer the question myself then:NEVER it can't happen
The probability surpases 10 to the 40th power(the borderline for a questioned event to happen in 10 billion years ,it was set I think by Emile Borel maybe someone else knows)

Emile Borel, Probabilities and Life
Probabilities must be regarded as analogous to the measurement of physical magnitudes; that is to say, they can never be known exactly, but only within certain approximation.

That says it all, I guess...

Originally posted by Larryjs
The 10to the 40th limit is set
by the currently accepted age of the universe at 10 billon years.
The monkey could not complete the works because he doesn't have enough TIME (Let's just say this hypothetical monkey is immortal or very nearly so)

I'm following you there, Larry, but it doesn't make sense...
Your original question is misleading ('How long will it take'): that's a question that can't be answered - it depends on the monkeys' typing skills, and on other variables that we don't know...

Therefore: The 'time'-factor is of no importance here. The only question that matters is 'Will the monkeys eventually produce it, yes or no?'. Sure it's unlikely, but given enough time and enough monkeys, it WOULD happen. That's why the time-factor isn't important: let's say chances that one monkey will produce the complete Shakespeare oeuvre are 1 out of 10 ^40. Now, what are the chances if we gave 10 ^ 40 monkeys a typewriter?

Right...
Never underestimate the power of 10 ^ 40 power monkeys

BUT - and this is where I agree with Larry - there's something we are missing here, namely the HUUUUUUUUUUGEness of the problem.

Lemme try to explain:

Let's say all the monkey has to type is 'Hamlet'

The math is easy: there are 26^6 possibilities with a 26-letters-keyboard: 308.915.776 possibilities that is. Let's say the monkey can produce one 6-letter word every second. The math is easy again: that's 31.556.736 6-letter words a year. So the answer to that question is easy: the monkey will NOT produce the word 'Hamlet' within a year, no doubt about that (even if every word he produces is different from all the previous ones). Problem: there IS a chance he WILL produce the word, but it's tiny

Let's look at it from another point of view: let's calculate the chances of the monkey producing that word in one year by calculating the chances of missing on every attempt - reverse mathematics, if you will
The chances of getting that word will be 100% minus the chances of missing on every attempt...

The chances he misses at his first attempt = 1 - 1/(26^6)
The chances he misses all his attempts for a full minute = 1 - 1/(26^6) ^ 60 and so on untill:
The chances he misses all his attempts for a year straight = ((((1 - 1/(26^6)) ^60) ^60) ^ 24) ^ 365

My l33t Windows calculator fails on me here though... (Maybe someone can try it on a Unix-box)

But what's the point of all of this? The output of this equation will be something like 0.9999999999....xxxxxx , meaning the chances the monkey will NOT produce that word are almost 100% . Even if we use 10 ^40 billion monkeys, the outcoming would always be something like 0.9999...xxxxx ! Meaning those monkeys will NOT produce that one damn word

Just some thoughts...


BTW: there's something wrong with the logic in that last example

This entire discussion reminds me of my little brother: 'I wanna go to a casino: either I win, or I don't win. So I have 1 chance out of 2 to win.'

PS: I don't have a little brother. He's 23.

[thor]

"Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death"
Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775.

So my answere is life.

Oh and about the monkey, somebody spank him, he can't do it

[FrequentZ]

I am just throwing these statements out to express my opinion.
(while it IS still legal)

First - We are already living in a police state in America. We have been for a long time. We may have more freedom than other countries around the globe, but as you all know, those freedoms are rapidly eroding. Note - WE did not elect our president.

Second - larryjs - You are right on the money with your comments about DNA. If I interpret them correctly, you are indicating either a divine or extra-terrestrial origin of life on this planet. I myself have given a lot of thought to the odds of an "accidental" chemical reaction resulting in DNA, and I think the Monkey has a better chance of producing Shakespeare letter for letter.

Everyone - Thanks for the diverse opinions, I enjoyed reading them.

[larryjs]

At last in the door walks Negative

Yes the question IS :will the monkey EVER produce the works. I think we all both the answer to that one. To around that question is pointless(although VictorKaum will disagree) NO. My second question is; and this is the REAL question

Will life arise on its own with no input from a higher intelligence?

You may cite that probalities aren't revalent because LIFE has arisen therefore the one of 10 to the 10000 power has happened.Sorta like the lotto here in Fl. The odds are 1 in like 16 million. You play...you hit... you have denied probability.But the scale is no where near the same!You will ask I'm sure ,where I got this figure from..*he he* and I will go into full detail about that later. This number is massive and millions of
times larger than the calculated estimate of all the known atoms in the universe. To hit by chance a the "1" in those odds...well its AKIN to that damn monkey producing shakespear's entire works(where is noble hamlet right now?) by random typing . And I brought up the monkey to say this:
He has the same chance as amino acids randomly forming proteins in the pre-biotic soup. I will go into elaborate detail about this impossibility later...when I have time to go into full detail.

[Terr]

But the odds of making the works of shakespeare are not infinite... So there is a certain chance that random characters will eventually generate Shakespeare's works... Only if you assume that there are additional constraints will the problem change, such as the lifespan of the universe. If the universe starts to settle into the big-crunch... won't that have an effect on time? Time is a property of space-time, so as the universe (if it ever does) starts going along the lines of a big-crunch scenario, wouldn't time never really stop for the monkey, given that he is immortal and not subject to spaghettification or somesuch? I might do some quick refreshers from A Brief History of Time later, but I'm just musing right now.

As for life forming... When you start to consider *everything*, the probability of anything in specific becomes infintesimal. What are the chances that our universe would develop with physical laws and forces (and metaphysical ones, etc.) that would support Life-As-We-Know-It? Do you mean that life must've been contrived, Larry? Then who contrived the contriver?

It could be possible that the infintesimal chance of LAWKI (Life as we know it) has occured and always will occur when you ask that question... because it has to have occured in order for the question to be asked by LAWKI.

There was an interesting little Sci-fi short story I read once... The premise was that universes are life. The DNA of universes is their physical laws. New universes are created through black hole 'budding'... Perhaps with help from life within universes. In that sense, the universe is life. Life, in fact, is such a tricky definition that I think almost anything in this vein of topic can be taken both ways...

[larryjs]

Ah...you catch my drift Terr but make one error. The "contriver"
has no begining..he is outside time and space . Those are just tanigibles that were produced at creation. He is eternal. Let me give you an example . Take a sheet of paper and draw a stick man on it. Lets pretend that this is a two dimensional world you have just created. The sticke man because of his limitations can only concieve of length and breadth. The "depth" aspect is unknown to him(lets not quibble about the thin edge of the paper) he can only move in two dimentions. Now in the door walks you...you can see all around the paper amd even detect its thin edge because you inhabit three dimentions so it is with this "contriver" "creator" whatever because he inhabits ALL dimentions he can see and know EVERYTHING and is not subject to the physical laws generated by lower dimentions.

[Terr]

Which begs the question: Where did the Eternal come from? I think that saying "It was always there" or "It was created by another, and that was made by another, etc... it goes on forever" are both, to some extent, cop-outs. In one, it stops a trend of life-causing-life, since nothing caused the Eternal, which seems a rather arbitrary way to suddenly end an otherwise-possibly-infinite progression. In the other explanation, that there are infinite causes before effects, it allows the philosophers/physics to drop the question and take a lunch break.

[larryjs]

Ah... but you see to say that he was always here is not a cop-out
You are looking the the paradigm of temporal thought Planc time is 10 to the -43rd second after the big bang.At this point the 4 basic forces of the universe separated they being .strong nuclear force(this holds the nucleus of atoms together) the second is the weak force(radioactivity) the third electro magnetism and the fourth is gravity..all dimentions(including TIME) were also created at this point and it gave rise to the laws of physics(before this point the current laws of physics were also invalid) This being is an outside observer to all of these aspects. he cannot be judged by our petty four dimentional concept of time. Think a second..try to grasp it. He can move thru time at will because he inhabits a dimention on a higher plane than time. Time is a varible as proved by the general thoery's time dilation equation(see attachment) If we can see how time is not constent using this equation ,how is it we cannot concieve of an "eternal" being OUTSIDE our space time fabric?