Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA20671 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 10 May 2000 14:04:31 +0100 From: Robin Faichney <robin@faichney.demon.co.uk> Organization: Reborn Technology To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Fwd: Did language drive society or vice versa? Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 13:22:23 +0100 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.0.21] Content-Type: text/plain References: <39190496.FB88F688@mediaone.net> Message-Id: <00051013281200.06148@faichney> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Wed, 10 May 2000, Chuck Palson wrote:
>Robin Faichney wrote:
>
>> The effects of evolution appear improbable to us, but they occurred
>> on a timescale that is beyond our ken. As I'm sure Wilson, Dawkins
>> and Dennett would all very readily agree, given enough time, almost
>> anything is possible. And if such events were *really* improbable,
>> why did they happen? Divine intervention?
>
>I am sure that Wilson at least would definitely not agree with this statement,
>nor would a lot of other students of evolution. The gross application of
>statistics that allows people to come up with the "anything is possible" is
>usually just a conceptual stopgap. For example, species usually only last a
>maximum of x million years (I think it's an average of about 7 million, but I
>can't recall for sure), so the time period itself is not infinite.
Why should an infinite time period be required? I did say "almost anything".
We're not talking water-into-wine here.
> This kind of
>anything-can-happen statistical scenario has been used to project an x
>probability that there is intelligent life in the universe that is within our
>sensing range. That seemed quite reasonable - except that someone recently
>noticed that there are vast areas of the universe where there are no planets
>that could have deveoped complex species because meteor showers continually
>interrupt the possibility. The earth just happens to exist behind some big
>planets that suck in the meteors before most get here.
That's an entirely different argument, and has no bearing here.
>If you had suggested a year ago your same logic, I might have agreed (although I
>was always a bit suspicious of the argument). But when I thought about all the
>improbable events that had to happen to actually create the human species in a
>specified and relatively short period of time like 7 million years, I found
>myself in agreement with Jay Gould and others who say that evolution is not an
>all-things-are-possible proposition. I do wish that God had been more orderly,
>but I guess he has to do what he has to do.:)
So you're a creationist?
-- Robin Faichney===============================This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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