Yes, arithmetically you are correct. However, the operative word is “if”.
As I said, reconstruct the criteria and apply them to our own galaxy. The result is contrary to your simple arithmetical analysis.
As I recall when Sagan applied them, he found that the vast majority of the volume of our galaxy is greatly hostile to life.
Then he applied the specific criteria required for habitable planets; the number he came up with was vanishingly small.
As I said earlier, I don’t have the cite for his work, but the collective efforts of the dopers should be able to reconstruct the list, and objectively perform the analysis.
Two separate issues: the uniqueness of planet earth; and the conditions for life.
As I have said repeatedly, reconstruct Sagans’s(?) list, of which I have provided a couple of criteria, and then we can objectively discuss the result.
This makes it appear you’ve misunderstood Blake. He’s not saying the probability is that low. Rather, he’s saying we don’t know what the probability is.
**1) **If you really believe this then I will offer you a bet. I will show you a picture of a female organism with wings. I will then give you an even odds bet concerning the pictures of the females of the same age and species on a random Google image page or, if you prefer, a random selection of wild insects. For every one that is also winged, I pay you 1, 000 dollars. For every one that is not, I pay you. As many pages as you like.
Since you say that the presence of the winged female establishes that all are winged with virtual certainty, you will surely take the bet. Right? You will make millions Or are you going to rethink your thesis?
**2) **Your analogy fails completely because your sample is not self selected. You will notice that every post I made has stressed the fact that our Earth is a sample self-selected due to the anthropic principle, ie we have to live on a planet capable of supporting life. A valid analogy would be as follows:
An entomologist sets up alight trap, a device that captures insects that fly towards the light. A sample size of one single observed member of a new species that has wings, is enough to establish with a virtual certainty that every other member of that gender of that species, at that age, also has wings.
Do you actually agree with this example? Do you really believe that if all the insects caught in a flying insect traps have wings, that tells us anything at all about the rest of the species? Or do you think the fact that the sample is self selected for flying insects might somewhat bias the results towards insects with wings?
He’s saying that we don’t know the probability of life arising. We DO have some idea of the probability of the conditions for life arising, though. It is not infintesimally small. And if the conditions occur hundreds of billions of times then it becomes magical thinking to insist that there is something unique or special about earth.
No, I don’t. I haven’t said that such a statistic is correct, merely that it is as likely as any other.
You are the one who has said that he has calculated the actual statistic and knows what it is. And we have asked you multiple times to tell us what the statistic is and how you calculated it. And you keep refusing.
I don’t think that too many people in this thread have failed to notice you weaseling away every time that question is asked.
At this stage we are forced to assume that you are utterly incapable of doing such calculations and are making it up when you say otherwise.
They don’t bear out your claim either. Our observation of the galaxy only tell us that there is no evidence that life ever originated elsewhere. That is all. It tells us nothing at all about the probability that it could do so.
Ok, because the vibe I’m getting is that since we can’t put a number on the probability of life arising on a given planet, then it’s unlikely that life has arisen anywhere else. and that seems wrong to me.
Since this is GQ, can you please show us the equations that you used to ascertain these probabilities? Because this is GQ, and not the forum for baseless opinions, so you must have calculated such probabilities before declaring what they are smaller than.
NINE TIMES DIO HAS BEEN ASKED THIS QUESTION.
At what stage can we legitimately declare that he can’t answer and is just making shit up?
You’re nitpicking the claim but ignoring the point. I had some text in there clarifying concerning social insects etc., but figured it was more distracting than necessary and didn’t think anyone actually needed it clarified.
You show me a new heretofore unobserved species, on earth, which has a heart, and I can tell you with near certainty that every other (living! fully developed! comeon don’t be silly here) member of that species also has a heart.
If you have good reasons to think your sample is representative, you have good reasons to generalize from it. Sample size is one factor, but not the only, and not an overriding one.
In addition to the point about self-selection, I took you also to be claiming that a sample size of one is never sufficient. If I was wrong about that, that’s fine–but then, why go through item A above, then?
This is actually pretty funny. I’m an real life scientist, I don’t just play one on TV. I’m one of the boards most prodiguous participants on thread on evolution. I have read the actual journal articles on abiogeneisis.
And because I ask Dio to support his assertion of fact made in GQ and he is obviously totally incapable of doing so, he resorts to ad hominem attacks and saying he can’t argue with me.
Well he got that right, he can’t argue with me. That’s because he has no ability to back up his assertions DESPITE BEING ASKED NINE FREAKIN’ TIMES.
No, what we are getting here is a kind of “how many angels can dance on a pin” discussion.
While Sagan’s list won’t give an analytically precise value for the various probabilities involved, it does give a qualitative feeling for the improbability of both a planet like earth being duplicated, and of life arising on such a planet.
Given that there were fifty odd criteria on the list, you can do the mental arithmetic without even seeing the list: what are the odds of an event occurring, given that it is conditional on a sequential combination of fifty prior random events?
