Jordan Peterson shows DNA Video

originally posted by: rnaa
a reply to: chr0naut

Careful, your agenda is showing. Please quote an example.

My agenda is published to my colleages on Google Calendar.

If I had a hidden one, it would be full of mundane things like doctor's appointments and reminders about when bills are due.

I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of my above top secret agenda.

Certainly, when a scientist finds that an hypothesis fails, they want to find out why. It could be because the hypothesis is flat out wrong, but it could also be because they designed the test incorrectly, equipment was bad, or misunderstood the implications, or any of many things. Usually an hypothesis has been picked apart by peers before grant money is sorted out, so there is a pretty good idea that they are on to something. Sometimes even if the hypothesis is just no good, there are still some good ideas in there that can inform the next hypothesis. Sometimes several competing hypotheses are equally useful in many respects but contradictory in others and those contradictions have to be reconciled.

But by the time an hypothesis is accepted as theory, there is seldom room for it to be disproven experimentally. Can you provide me with an example?

With your background in physics, maybe you have an example of a theory (not an hypothesis) that has been disproven experimentally?

Superseded scientific theories From Wikipedia

And were there vested interests illegitimately hanging on to their grants trying to prove that it really was true after all? And does this happen often to theories and researchers all over the world? (and we are not talking about charlatans working in a company lab trying to prove that cigarettes are healthy kinda guys).

Some of those company labs were located at major universities. You just answered your own question.

Quantum Theory makes perfect sense. Its just weird, that's all.

Even nonsense poems make some sort of sense.

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” It's simply elementary, my dear reader.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

i.e: even if it looks like nonsense, it may not be.

“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”

Werner Heisenberg

i.e: it just doesn't make sense

originally posted by: rnaa
a reply to: rnaa

Yeah, yeah, replying to myself.

...

Ah ha! The old Chinese Mirror trick...

originally posted by: rnaa
a reply to: chr0naut

They are looking for general evidences of life processes, like metabolization and chemical modification of the foodstuffs from their optimal (and preferentially optimised) form/s.

Which, when found in a peanut jar would look EXACTLY like every other modern life form on earth and would therefore immediately disqualify it from being the result of a abiogenesis event in that peanut jar, or if it actually was there would be no way of recognizing it as such.

Except that with statistical sampling methods, they wouldn't just throw away the tested instances of the spoiled product, they would investigate the cause of the spoilage to ensure that the entire supply remains safe for consumption.

If the source wasn't found, it would be a boon for researchers to have found a new life form.

The discovery of nylon eating bacteria was very similar to what that process would look like.

Your challenge was why don't we see abiogenesis all the time. A 'new' life form, freshly created through an abiogenesis event, would NOT look anything like the modern life on earth after several billions of years of evolution. NOTHING AT ALL.

But the identification of the newness of the life form comes much later. The initial result of testing would show that something other than sterile conditions was happening, without specifics of the cause.

You just don't get it do you? Newly 'enlivened' life forms simply cannot pop into existence looking like modern life. Heck, creationists have been telling us that for years - according to their calculations the odds against it are 10 to 50,000 or something.

Please make an attempt to grok that and its consequences.

Thank you, I thought I was going to have a hard time tracking her down. I see she is already running up against difficulties with her findings. More research is required, both by her and by me. I'm going to enjoy furthering my reading here.

However, notice where she is looking: in environments where the 'normal' terran life requirements are lacking. Exotic locations, arsenic pools.

Where are the cometary impacts and vulcanism that you suggested were required?

Does chemical abiogenesis honour the 'exoticness' of the environment more than the chemical suitability of the environment?

Can't you see that you keep calling upon factors that have less to do with the actual chemical processes and more to do with the idea that it must happen 'magically' and not in a mundane or routine situation.

Not peanut butter jars. You suggest we should see abiogenesis in peanut butter jars because all the ingrediants for normal, modern life are there. For the umpteenth time: why would you expect to find new, exotic, fresh abiogenesis events in such an environment amid all the standard products of a few billion years of evolution.

Yes, it is trivial to gather data, but it is not trivial to gather the RIGHT DATA, and distinguish information from all the background noise of everything else that is going on.

Again the question is: how do you recognize a novel life form that formed as a result of an new, modern abiogenesis event, from every other existing life forms that have been evolving for billions of years. As an additional problem, how do they survive long enough for you to find them when every other existing life form that has been evolving for billions of years want to eat them? One way, as you have pointed out, is to look in environments that are particularly hostile to 'normal' life, as does Dr. Wolfe-Simon, but that is still not easy.

You could also use sterile precursor chemicals, in the right abundances, concentrated in glassware (that way, if chemical abiogenesis did occur, it would likely bloom in the nutrient environment without predation by other life forms).

However, those questions are not in play on Mars. If we do find life on Mars we automatically know several things: one life on Earth is not unique, it happened on two planets on the same solar system, it is therefore likely abundant in the whole universe.

Sure it is harder to study life on Mars, but compared to finding new abiogenesis events on Earth finding any life at all (if it exists) on Mars is a piece of cake. Just the very existence of life on Mars influences our study of life on Earth.

Of course, we are looking for life on Mars, using our experience of life on Earth, and this may be really barking up the wrong tree. What if it isn't carbon based? What if it doesn't produce the waste products we expect? How do we detect it?

What if it operates at such a low level of metabolism that we think it is inanimate rock?

What if it all happens so fast, we think it is fire?

What if it happens deep in the energetic and dense atmospheres of stars (I like the idea of Sunfauna. I'll probably write a Sci Fi story one day of the discovery of giant hyper-intelligent life happening in an environment so alien that communication and predation are almost out of the question but what if they went to war against us anyway)?

What if it exists holographically expressed and 2D, stuck near the event horizons of black holes?

originally posted by: rnaa
a reply to: cooperton
Furthermore, I find no source for your 100,000 nucleotide assertion. What animal does that number relate to? (source)

We used 33 protein sequences of titin from modern vertebrate species, with most of them corresponding to the complete protein sequence composed of more than 30,000 residues.

I could be reading that wrong, but I think it is saying that your 100,000 number should be closer to 30,000.

There are 3 nucleotides per amino acid (protein residue) So 30,000 protein residues is 90,000 nucleotides. The highest estimate I've seen for titin is 33,333+ protein residues (100,000+ nucleotides).

And your proof of this rather extraordinarily 'brave' assertion is what exactly? While no complete description of the evolution of titin has been proposed (at least not in the surface detail of the research that is available to me), a lot of research has gone into sequencing titin which has identified on the order of 363 exons along with 38,000+ residues (introns). Introns do not code for amino acids, only exons do. So the evolutionary 'difficulty' you perceive is not anywhere as difficult as you seem to think.

38,000 amino acids on an intron is 114,000 nucleotides.

"But almighty evolution can do anything, nothing is impossible for it. Since evolution is true, then evolution must have done it."

Research as far back as 1994 has found that: (source)
Titin and twitchin are giant proteins expressed in muscle. They are mainly composed of domains belonging to the fibronectin class III and immunoglobulin c2 families, repeated many times. In addition, both proteins have a protein kinase domain near the C-terminus. This paper explores the evolution of these and related muscle proteins in an attempt to determine the order of events that gave rise to the different repeat patterns and the order of appearance of the proteins.

Again, because they identified it, evolution must have done it? You don't even have access to the whole paper and you blindly assert that they must be correct. Don't you realize the danger in such rash judgement? Because there is presumably no answer in the paper (I would assume it would be in the abstract if they found such an answer)

As to whether titin precursors could have had other function before it became titin, I couldn't follow up very far, but here is one such indication: source

While somewhat speculative, evidence suggests that this group of giant elastic proteins may have been co-opted from chromosomal giant proteins responsible for DNA supercoiling.

When a perplexing conundrum arises that challenges evolutionary theory, they take their best guesses. But at the end of the day, they know 'evolution did it', so they can rest easy.

Show me a verified example of random mutation causing a gene to be successively translated twice to make a double mRNA strand. This would be the theorized mechanism, I would imagine, if it ever were observed empirically. This is what they are suggesting in the paper, not just once, but many many times. The problem is that this would still take many, many miraculous mutations, not to mention an entire gene replication mutation has never been observed, althewhile titin would STILL be extremely inviable until it reached its functional length. And again, until titin is formed, actin and myosin in regards to skeletal muscle would be useless. You need all the components in play to have a functional organ, and piece-by-piece mutation could in no way suffice such monumentous leaps from inviability to viability.

I do not deal in fairy tales.

"Evolution did it", is a fairy tale, with extrapolated data to support its own imagination.

a reply to: chr0naut

Superseded scientific theories From Wikipedia

Okay, however, "Superseded scientific theories" doesn't necessarily mean it has been proven false, just that a better explanation has emerged.

Sure,

In some cases, a theory or idea is found baseless and is simply discarded. For example, the phlogiston theory was entirely replaced by the quite different concept of energy and related laws.

but

In other cases an existing theory is replaced by a new theory that retains significant elements of the earlier theory; in these cases, the older theory is often still useful for many purposes, and may be more easily understood than the complete theory and lead to simpler calculations. An example of this is the use of Newtonian physics, which differs from the currently accepted relativistic physics by a factor that is negligibly small at velocities much lower than that of light.

Many of the items listed are not really theories in the modern scientific sense.

Phlogiston though is quite a good example. It had a big hole that was never satisfactorily resolved, but it was accepted theory for awhile. The discovery of oxygen enabled a newer better theory to fully replace it.

Several of the 'theories' listed were not proved false or superseded, they have been absorbed into larger theories. Classical Newton Physics is in this list, but it has never been proven wrong. It is just a special case embedded within relativity and quantum physics. Likewise with several of the early genetic hypotheses (not theories), including Mendel and Darwin. Their work was never considered as theories until the 1930's when the 'Modern Evolutionary Synthesis' theory was described.

Many other so-called theories were never theories. Idea without any experimental support can never be a theory. At most it is an hypothesis, even if it is accepted generally. The idea that California was an island could never be called a scientific theory.

In general, no experimental support - no theory. Hypothesis maybe, theory no.

Overall, that is an interesting list, but most of the list is not made up of actual scientific theories as we understand them today. The 'talk' page for that article starts off with exactly this discussion.

This article lists "scientific theories" that are supposedly superseded or considered false. Almost every single "theory" listed is not a scientific theory as it is understood in science. Many are a hypothesis, and others are pseudoscience. This should be changed to something along the lines of "Superseded hypotheses and pseudo-scientific beliefs". If you actually view the Wikipedia pages of those "scientific theories" listed, many of the pages themselves clearly say "hypothesis" or "belief". If it's a hypothesis, then it's not a theory. This page is clearly talking about "scientific theories", in which case the colloquial usage of "theory" does not apply (which is the way it's currently used)

that discussion continues with a little back and forth and then concludes with

This article refers to the history of science. In it's history practitioners were self appointed and formed societies. To judge the past by formal disciplines that exist today would only conclude that they weren't scientists and weren't practicing science. I would be in favor of an expanded lede, pointing out that "scientist", "scientific theory" and "scientific method" have very different meanings in the present than they did in the past.

The point being that to apply the term 'scientific theory' to a notion that was generally accepted by the community before it idea of the scientific method was formalized is misleading and self-defeating. We are not discussing Ptolemy, we are discussing modern biology (or we were at one time).

(Also, this article is in danger of being deleted because it doesn't meet the Wikipedia content standards, especially with respect to citations, and has not done for 10 years. Maybe you could roll your sleeves up and save the day?)

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: skywatcher44

This is supposed to have happend through random interactions of basic chemistry in an inorganic soup?

Really?

the interactions you see in the video took literally millions of years to nail down through literally billions of trillions of mistakes in a completely natural environment.

originally posted by: Raggedyman
a reply to: Barcs

So your saying complex things need a creator, we agree
Well done you

We just have to understand what is considered as complex in your definition
Is a watch complex or not?

but a complex creator can just exist by default, no assembly required.

interesting logic.

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: Barcs

originally posted by: Dr UAE
a reply to: Barcs

our limited understanding

so with your limited understanding you want to tell us that you can understand the nature of the creator who created the things that until now we fail to fully understand ?

No, I am admitting I don't know the answer to something that we don't actually know. I'm not the one claiming to know any nature of god. That is the theists who started the whole "eternal god that exists outside of the universe" concept. I am arguing against claims related to that. I fully admit I don't know, but in all honesty neither does anybody.

Thesists don't belive that God exists only outside of time and space, that is what the word omnipresent means.

God exists within the entirety of all of space and time as well as external to them.

This means that the repetition of references to the "sky fairy" or "magic daddy in the sky" only reveals how much you guys don't get it.

the above would be defined as "hypothesis" as you are unable to test the veracity of your claims, which makes it useless as far as scientific inquiry is concerned. if the scientific method cant touch it, then it cannot be confirmed. and that makes it speculation bordering on fantasy.

give us a claim we can test. not another endless semantics debate.

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: Barcs

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: skywatcher44

This is supposed to have happend through random interactions of basic chemistry in an inorganic soup?

Really?

Jordan Peterson is deceptive, first of all. He's romanticizing it and using tons of buzz words just like Stephen Meyer does. Nothing in that video shows that DNA could not have been the result of billions of years of incremental changes, where the original molecule was not anywhere near as complex as modern DNA. It's a complete straw man and it's illogical to appeal to complexity. So if you are saying god is a more likely explanation than natural processes, then god would HAVE TO BE much more complex than DNA itself. Therefor by those standards god must need a creator as well.

No, you need all those things to happen together to get life.

It makes no sense to have DNA replication mechanisms without, at least, DNA precursors. It also makes no sense to have 'generations' of DNA precursors without a replication mechanism.

Which is higly improbable.

And God is not limited by temporality. That is a fairly basic part of the paradigm, God exists without beginning or end.

But chemistry and matter is temporal.

if you cannot demonstrate the property of "atemporality" then it really doesnt provide much defense for your...ahem, "theory".

originally posted by: chr0naut
Yes, it is absolutely 100% special pleading to say that the universe requires a creator but god does not. You are making special rules that you think applies to the universe, and creating a being that is an exemption to all of that, with no evidence at all. If you can postulate god is eternal, than somebody else can postulate that the universe (or some aspect of it) is eternal. The logic doesn't change. Making up a god and inserting him into a place that can't be measured, tested or even shown to be mathematically viable, is special pleading and doesn't answer the question, it only moves the goalposts and raises more questions.

The ideas that the universe requires a Creator and god requires a Creator are not mutually exclusive though. That is to say even if you were apply the same argument to show that the creator of the universe requires a Creator of its own. that doesn't negate the whole thing.

a reply to: TzarChasm

I bet you believe in a Big Bang and abiogenesis,
Interesting logic

a reply to: chr0naut

Nothing I said was out of context. You said "entirely," not me. If you said "not fully evidenced" the first time, I would have agree with you.

Are the Van Der Waals forces different? The valences? Do you think that proto-RNA, RNA, proto-DNA and DNA are governed by magic rather than exactly the same chemistry?

I don't know. Again, we don't know exactly what proto-RNA is or how it functions. The experiment was based on modern DNA.

You can't discard it as a theory or hypothesis, it is not yet disproven, due to a lack of contradictory evidence. If you had contradictory evidence it would not be a valid theory or hypothesis because it would be disproven by that contradictory evidence.

So saying something is a hypothesis is an argument from ignorance as defined.

Complete nonsense. I didn't discard anything. I just stated what it was. I didn't postulate an alternative explanation because we don't know everything about it, that is what YOU are doing. That wasn't an appeal to ignorance in the slightest.

But here's some postulations of how amino acids might arise from sources other than natural biology and naturally occuring inorganic chemistry:

- Nano-tech that assembles amino acids molecularly.

- Chemists directly synthesizing amino acids by chaining processes that could not occur naturally.

- Synthetic DNA and RNA and subsequent transcription.

- God could create them.

- Perhaps we will find that plasma states of matter can create particular amino acids, through physics rather than chemistry as we know it (very hypothetical).

Um, that is not an alternative interpretation of the evidence. That is DIFFERENT methods in which amino acids might possibly generate, which is completely speculative in the first place, so it is yet another appeal to ignorance completely irrelevant to what you claimed about interpretation. LOL @ "god could create them." Okay then. That's like saying that ships might be able to run using god power instead of gas, we just don't know it yet, so there may be an alternative interpretation to gasoline combustion.

double post.

originally posted by: TzarChasm

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: Barcs

originally posted by: Dr UAE
a reply to: Barcs

our limited understanding

so with your limited understanding you want to tell us that you can understand the nature of the creator who created the things that until now we fail to fully understand ?

No, I am admitting I don't know the answer to something that we don't actually know. I'm not the one claiming to know any nature of god. That is the theists who started the whole "eternal god that exists outside of the universe" concept. I am arguing against claims related to that. I fully admit I don't know, but in all honesty neither does anybody.

Thesists don't belive that God exists only outside of time and space, that is what the word omnipresent means.

God exists within the entirety of all of space and time as well as external to them.

This means that the repetition of references to the "sky fairy" or "magic daddy in the sky" only reveals how much you guys don't get it.

the above would be defined as "hypothesis" as you are unable to test the veracity of your claims, which makes it useless as far as scientific inquiry is concerned. if the scientific method cant touch it, then it cannot be confirmed. and that makes it speculation bordering on fantasy.

give us a claim we can test. not another endless semantics debate.

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: Barcs

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: skywatcher44

This is supposed to have happend through random interactions of basic chemistry in an inorganic soup?

Really?

Jordan Peterson is deceptive, first of all. He's romanticizing it and using tons of buzz words just like Stephen Meyer does. Nothing in that video shows that DNA could not have been the result of billions of years of incremental changes, where the original molecule was not anywhere near as complex as modern DNA. It's a complete straw man and it's illogical to appeal to complexity. So if you are saying god is a more likely explanation than natural processes, then god would HAVE TO BE much more complex than DNA itself. Therefor by those standards god must need a creator as well.

No, you need all those things to happen together to get life.

It makes no sense to have DNA replication mechanisms without, at least, DNA precursors. It also makes no sense to have 'generations' of DNA precursors without a replication mechanism.

Which is higly improbable.

And God is not limited by temporality. That is a fairly basic part of the paradigm, God exists without beginning or end.

But chemistry and matter is temporal.

if you cannot demonstrate the property of "atemporality" then it really doesnt provide much defense for your...ahem, "theory".

Atemporality does exist for mundane things, but they are not matter.

One might argue that the packetized quanta of a photon, since it exists forever and cannot be destroyed, demonstrates a property of atemporality (this also raises questions of its starting point in time within conventional physical models).

Similarly, the beginnings and ends of fundamental forces raise questions (although some of them may be emergent properties).

These are real, repeatably and objectively observable things with fixed magnitudes.

originally posted by: snarfbot

originally posted by: chr0naut
Yes, it is absolutely 100% special pleading to say that the universe requires a creator but god does not. You are making special rules that you think applies to the universe, and creating a being that is an exemption to all of that, with no evidence at all. If you can postulate god is eternal, than somebody else can postulate that the universe (or some aspect of it) is eternal. The logic doesn't change. Making up a god and inserting him into a place that can't be measured, tested or even shown to be mathematically viable, is special pleading and doesn't answer the question, it only moves the goalposts and raises more questions.

The ideas that the universe requires a Creator and god requires a Creator are not mutually exclusive though. That is to say even if you were apply the same argument to show that the creator of the universe requires a Creator of its own. that doesn't negate the whole thing.

Just for clarity, I actually didn't write the text you quoted. I believe that the correct attribution of the original poster (BARCS), who was replying to me, has been removed when the quoted paragraph was copied in to the new post.

originally posted by: TzarChasm
the above would be defined as "hypothesis" as you are unable to test the veracity of your claims, which makes it useless as far as scientific inquiry is concerned. if the scientific method cant touch it, then it cannot be confirmed. and that makes it speculation bordering on fantasy.

i dont think an inability to test would make it useless. as long as you are actively making effort to falsify it is sufficient. like in quantum physics, they cant test for a great many things, but as long as their particular model can predict things that we can test or have tested already then it is an acceptable hypothesis.

a reply to: chr0naut

lol yes it seems i made a mistake cutting/pasting on my phone, and its not letting me edit now as its been over 4 hours, sorry.

originally posted by: snarfbot
The ideas that the universe requires a Creator and god requires a Creator are not mutually exclusive though. That is to say even if you were apply the same argument to show that the creator of the universe requires a Creator of its own. that doesn't negate the whole thing.

Yes, I wasn't arguing that it negated the whole idea of god. I was picking apart the logic used in that particular argument. I said that the argument itself invokes double standards and is special pleading. Therefor, it is not a logical argument to say that the universe NEEDS a creature, yet that creator does not. The universe can't come from nothing or exist eternally, but god can? It's just a poor argument.

originally posted by: snarfbot
a reply to: chr0naut

lol yes it seems i made a mistake cutting/pasting on my phone, and its not letting me edit now as its been over 4 hours, sorry.

No worries, I understand entirely!

originally posted by: Barcs

originally posted by: snarfbot
The ideas that the universe requires a Creator and god requires a Creator are not mutually exclusive though. That is to say even if you were apply the same argument to show that the creator of the universe requires a Creator of its own. that doesn't negate the whole thing.

Yes, I wasn't arguing that it negated the whole idea of god. I was picking apart the logic used in that particular argument. I said that the argument itself invokes double standards and is special pleading. Therefor, it is not a logical argument to say that the universe NEEDS a creature, yet that creator does not. The universe can't come from nothing or exist eternally, but god can? It's just a poor argument.

Here's a bit of an exploration of ideas for you, that might get you to reconsider:

Let's propose that at some future time, all the living conscious and 'higher mind' organisms, from all the universe, have transcended their individual physical limitations and have increased communication abilities and reduced communication delays to the point where they share each others thoughts, directly and unimpeded.

They become a singular entity of individuals, the sum of all intelligence. Let's call it 'Omega'.

Yet Omega finds itself in a temporal entropic universe that will end it/them all.

No doubt, Omega will look for ways to differentially collapse parts of spacetime to ensure energy gradients enough to extend existence but even this is a stopgap.

So Omega must find ways to escape the future, perhaps into the past? I mean, time can be concieved as a dimensional construct. Einsteinian concepts of spacetime actually mandate its dimensional form.

At the time Omega is capable of such time travel, it becomes something outside of the continuum of time - it is atemporal but still had its origins within time. Let's rename this entity Alpha-Omega as is now more fitting (and will help clarify my exploration).

Now, normally we would consider something atemporal as being unable to change, and from our perspective, within time's constraints, that would be the apparent case. However, computation from Alpha-Omega's perspective would take no time, or its duration would be meaningless to talk about. So from the perspective of an atemporal being, computation is indistinguishable from being instant, as is volition and action.

Now, what if, amid the sea of probabilities, there are alternate realities possible where Alpha-Omega could neither arise nor exist. Surely Alpha-Omega would wish to direct things within time, using the rules existent in its reality and/or that it devises, to ensure its path to existence.

The creation of a temporal universe, in which it may arise, is a reasonable conclusion to draw.

Now imagine that its newly arisen existence in time (new Omega), melds with its existence outside of time, Alpha-Omega. Then repeat the process perpetually.

Such an entity could be renamed as 'all-in-all' or 'I exist' as it's existence would be the very source and definition of absolutely everything. It also would have all the attributes of God proposed by the Theologians.

There is rationale for its existence, with goals and purposes. A requirement to not be passive, but to be interventionist.

The fact that you can concieve such things as a rational sequence indicates that what the Theologists assert is not irrational, nor would it make the argument for existence of such a being special pleading (as a temporally constrained creator god would have to be).

a reply to: chr0naut

Can I make up a bunch of hypothetical stuff to support my side now? Postulating what ifs does not magically make an apologetic argument logical.

originally posted by: Barcs
a reply to: chr0naut

Can I make up a bunch of hypothetical stuff to support my side now? Postulating what ifs does not magically make an apologetic argument logical.

Does for philosophy and mathematics.

Also, the early steps in scientific method are:
- Make an observation.
- Form a question.
- Form a hypothesis.
... & etc.

I would have thought that the only way to present an argument (even an apologetic) is to propose hypotheses so that their 'reasonableness' may be evaluated.