Disgusting, Scary 'Walking' Fish Invades Maryland

texchanchan writes: "It's from China, it's a predator, and it can live for DAYS out of water. And it's in Maryland as reported at Yahoo. 'They can survive for two to three days out of water, breathing air with a primitive lung, pushing themselves around with their pectoral fins.' Read about it at the Maryland Fishing Report site or just look at its picture. Maryland Fishing Report says: 'This fish was most likely introduced by an individual with an aquarium. Never release aquarium fish into ponds and lakes!' Those exotic species will get us yet."

Comments

Re: proof? yes, of some things

[Black Parrot]

> The odds are not just low, they are flat out impossible. 10^50 is considered a mathematical equivalent of impossible, and 10^123 is way beyond that.

No, p=0 is the mathematical equivalent of impossible, and there is no concept of "way beyond" impossible. You're just spouting creationist bunkum.

I know it's pointless trying to convince you, but if any lurkers are reading this and haven't thought it out before, consider what happens when you shuffle a deck of cards and then examine the resulting order. The probablility of getting that order is 1/52!, AKA 1/10^68. Clearly, 1/10^68 is not "impossible", because it happens every time someone shuffles a deck of cards.

Want "way beyond" impossible? Just add more cards. Two decks gives 1/10^167. Three gives 1/10^276. Tell me how impossible you want it, and I'll tell you how many decks of cards you need.

Unless you want p=0, which can't be done by cards - by definition.

...you have 2^48 odds or 10^14 odds of getting just the chirality correct.

Scientists do not posit that the first self-replicator came about via random chance, any more than a chemist reckons that it is random chance that delivers NaCl + HOH when you mix HCl + NaOH in a beaker. The universe is not a random assemblage of matter and energy; there are all manner of laws and forces that make some conformations enormously more likely than others.

Without knowing what the first self-replicator was and by what pathway it arose, your probability calculations are just numbers pulled out of your ass.

> And if there were a self-replicating protein, what would prevent it from continuing to exist today?

A planet full of life that eats proteins? An oxygen-based atmosphere? (What was I saying earlier about creationists and thinking?)

> And if gradual evolution is to be accepted, why are there no 2-5 cell creatures - why unicellular and many-cellular, no few-cellular?

Assuming this claim is even correct, what's the problem? Some cells stick together as colonies and others don't - why should we require some to stick together in colonies of an arbitrary size? Multi-cellular life is thought to have arisen via cell specialization in multicellular colonies. It's a silly parody of evolution of the theory of evolution to claim that a life form with n+1 cells arose from a lifeform with n cells, and that all the lifeforms of sizes {1, 2, ... n} must now exist for the form of size n+1 to exist.

Also, large modern multicellular creatures don't have any difficulty bootstrapping themselves up from a single cell without leaving 2-5 cell intermediates lying about. Why should evolution have any difficulty doing the same thing?

> Science is not about "might be". It's about facts.

Actually, science is about providing the best possible explanation for the evidence currently at hand. When there's insufficient evidence bearing on a topic they sometimes have to rely on conjectures, or even "we don't know".

> And a simple fact is that unless the "self-replicating protein" were near-perfect in replicative abilities, it would not be able to accurately reproduce itself.

Actually, an imperfect replicator is exactly what we are looking for. Evolution doesn't happen to perfect replicators.

Also, speaking of "the" replicator may lend to misconceptions, since "the" replicator may have been a cycle of reactions involving multiple "agents". I.e., at the earliest stages of proto-life we may be looking at mixtures of reagents rather than individuals.

> And simple entropic principles would lead to its degradation into simpler parts.

Care to show the math on your entropy calculations?

Lurkers take note: creationists are tres fond of invoking entropy, so long as they don't have to define anything, measure anything, or show any mathematics. (If you ever find a creationist willing to do all that, please bring it to my attention.)

But skipping the standard creationist handwaving fare and getting back to the original post... What you are arguing here is abiogenesis, not evolution. The theory of evolution doesn't care where the original replicators came from; it merely explains the pattern of changes you see once you do have a system of imperfect replicators. (Remember what science is? We see massive evidence that life has changed over time; we try to explain it.)

And FWIW, both scientists and creationists agree that abiogenesis happened at some point in the earth's history. The only disagreements are over when it happened and what the mechanism was. If you want me to accept your made-up probabilities for chemical abiogenesis, are you willing to accept my made-up probabilities for divine abiogenesis?