> I recently had a very interesting conversation with the person responsible for maintaining around 3000 systems, mostly Linux.
Forgive me, I was thinking userbase rather than number of boxes. The number of boxes is substantially lower than that, though I don't know exactly how much lower. Still large enough to provoke here whinge about commodity {hard,soft}ware.
Re: This applies to business users also
on
A Linux User Goes Back
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· Score: 5, Insightful
> kNIGits says: "Mr Joe Average is someone who wants to install their OS, boot it up, and it works. He wants to be able to upgrade his PC , and have the hardware work in a few short minutes.
Mr. Joe Average doesn't install his OS, nor does he upgrade his hardware, unless you count plugging in a peripheral as an "upgrade".
> If anyone out there is support an installation of over 1000 linux desktops I would like to know their experiences.
I recently had a very interesting conversation with the person responsible for maintaining around 3000 systems, mostly Linux.
She hates Linux - for the same reason that she hates Windows, Intel, and AMD. She hates commodity stuff because it's always changing. Order a dozen computers and install them; order a dozen more a month later, and they're completely different. Different hardware, different software. So over a few years of stepwise upgrades/replacements in your large farm of servers/desktops, you end up with a mix of small numbers of many variants.
From the maintenance POV, the best experience comes from buying commodity hardware/software combos from Sun or the like, where you can get more of the same when you need to order some more.
But who wants the five year old state of the art on their desktop? There seems to be a direct trade-off between providing the best user experience and providing the best maintainer experience, at least when you're talking about large numbers of boxes.
> What's wrong with how OSS software is being written now?
> Lot's of people having itches, lots of people scratching them... the larger projects have sponsors or full time developers by companies that use the software, I don't really see a need for something like this.
That's probably the most sensible response so far.
But the lame idea does suggest other ideas. For example, we could write our applications to show splash screens that displayed the latest EFF legislation alert, stuff like that.
An even better precedent for it is Windows 9x, which, when started, displays what one wit has described as "an advertisement for a product you already bought".
> just imagine when (not if) microsoft figures this out and all those poor bastards using Windows QX 2003 Amateur have to put up with ads for mouse pointers.
LMAO. You should patent that really quick - if only to keep someone from actually doing it.
But think of the upgrade options!
smaller, less obtrusive pointer: $35/mo
pointer with animation and sound turned off: $42/mo
> Once when I load? Isn't one of the biggest selling points of *nix in general the high uptime?
Heh heh heh. I log in exactly once per incident of {new system purchase, hardware upgrade, OS upgrade, hardware failure}. Right now, that's 125 days at home and 256 days at work. I'd see about two ads a year, unless they figured a way to force an ad back down the pipe whenever I do ssh remothost dosomething.
Good luck selling the ads for enough to cover the costs of tracking down suckers to buy them.
> Too Bad that a lot of the servers on the top 50 uptime list still have the default page that apache provides. I'm sure it isn't too difficult to keep them running - just make sure the power is on and the network cable is plugged in.
Historically, some very popular and widely sold operating systems couldn't even do that much.
> Well, not *all* of the background is ill-conceived. The Jedi are a great idea...
Sorry; I meant to indicate the virgin birth, chloro-midgets, and all the other crap served up in E1 in order to try to make the whole thing hang together.
> Movies, series, whatever all ends. Well, the way Star Wars is going, it's going into the shitter. Overall, people dont like ep 1, and they hate ep2. ANd if you were around back then, you oughtta remember why Star Wars was popular. Hint: It wasnt the plot (try special fx). They just created more shows for revenue. They were just hooks to continue the first one.
Amen, brother!
SW was actually pretty dumb by any objective criterion, but it worked as a movie because it was just a space opera / action flick with no goals other than to have and give a good time.
Unfortunately, the Joseph Campbell connection came up, the media and the fans took it way too seriously, and Lucas tried too hard to deliver on it in the next show and a half, but he just couldn't deliver serious flickature.
And perhaps he realized that it wasn't working after ESB, because while continuing to try to follow through with the "heavy" stuff in RotJ, he also added in heroic teddybears for the kiddies.
And as if he hadn't mucked things up enough by that point, by the time he got around to doing E1 he completely dropped the attempts at a "heavy" story, but unfortunately, instead of returning to the mindless fun of SW he just left a huge gap in the motivations: the series was now "about" itself. So we got a meandering story with ill-conceived background concepts to help shove the plot forward, continued overkill kiddie-appeal, and an unmotivated dazzle of special effects to try to glue all that uninteresting stuff together into the blockbuster the public expected of him.
Now, I'd like to continue this analysis through E2, but sadly, I didn't bother going to see it. There's better stuff on television.
So what's Lucas' legacy?
When he tried to give us a good time, he gave us a good time.
When he tried to be great, he flopped.
When he kept going without a focus, he made a fool out of himself.
Now cereal box treats are the most enduring legacy of the grandly conceived nonolgy.
And what's his solution for this?
More of the same! Bugger off, Spielberg, fans, and critics! There's a trilogy to be finished! (I forget why I'm making it, but it's got to be done!) Bring on the animators! Call up Burger King and Pizza Hut! The show must go on!
> I get *hell* from customs for sneaking Mighty Taco [mightytaco.com] across the border, and yet these nasty things are available in any large Asian community?
Leave the baggie of pot out and they'll wave you right through.
I have a get-rich-quick plan: copyright your name, streak the Superbowl, get caught on purpose, and sue all the newspapers that use your name without permission when they report the story.
d00d! You forgot the most important part of your post, which should have gone something like this:
I retract my erroneous and easily refuted assertion that anything with a probability less than 1/10^50 is impossible. See the parent post for a simple demonstration of this simple fact.
And though it's optional, I heartily recommend adding the following disclaimer as well:
Since Slashdot doesn't honor humor tags, I feel I should point out to any innocents reading this thread that I was just trawling for the coveted (+5, funny) moderation when I made the silly suggestion that something could be way more improbable than something else already reckoned to be impossible.
But having made your bed, let's see how well you lie in it.
First, let me call to the attention of any innocents reading this post that your probability argument - like all creationist probability arguments I've ever seen - relies critically on a hidden assumption that life is a completely random assemblage of atomic components. Lurkers my want to speculate, publicly or privately, why creationists always make this (hidden) assumption; my own speculation is that it's a combinaton fo these three factors:
the typical creationist knows exactly diddley-jack about the natural sciences, and thus couldn't assume a more realistic mechanism even if he wanted to; and
admitting that the arrangements of the molecules in biological organisms is the result of laws and forces that bias the outcome runs a great risk of unwittingly admitting that the mechanisms proposed by the theory of evolution really work; and
any assumption other than completely random configurations with uniform probabilities will not produce the astonomical numbers needed to impress the rubes with an otherwise silly argument.
At any rate, giving AC his desired probability model, and given that the universe exists and the matter in his protein actually exists, we find that there is a truly astronomical number of possible configurations for that matter - probably a higher number even than he calculates - with the resulting possiblility of any single one of those configurations existing - given his assumptions - being <<1/10^50, and thus "impossible". However, given that the universe and the matter in the protein does exist, we conclude that the probability that it is in one of those configurations is 1.0 - just as for the outcome of shuffling a deck of cards.
So much for creationist probability arguments; they don't even rise to their own standards, let alone to the standards of science.
> You further speculate that there was a non-oxygen atmosphere in the past which the proteins arose in.
No, that's based on evidence, not speculation. For instance, the iron in all your worldly goods was accessible to human miners because it precipitated out of the oceans en masse when the atmosphere "turned over" to an oxygen-based atmosphere and oxidized it. Otherwise it would be (more or less) randomly distributed throughout the crust.
There is other evidence for our pre-oxygen atmosphere; you might want to read up on it if this sort of thing interests you and your faith doesn't rely too much on isolating yourself from facts about the world you live in.
> That's because if you don't have very accurate reproduction, you'll get random mutations which, by the laws of probstat, will degenerate most of the organisms via a mechanism known as "return to the mean".
There is no such mechanism; do not misinterpret the "law of large numbers" as a programmed directional shift. You seem to be one who knows just enough about statistics to be dangerous.
Also very importantly, do not critique the theory of evolution on the basis of a straw-model that omits an enormously important part of the theory, natural selection. (And sexual selection and all that other good stuff you'll hear about if you ever get past them metaphorical Page One in your knowledge of the theory of evolution.)
Hint: Sundayschool ain't the place to learn about it.
> You're claiming that evolution does not involve abiogenesis.
Indeed I am, and that's because it doesn't. The theory of evolution says nothing about where life came from. Terraform a planet and pack off your favorite species for a permanent visit, and you'll find that they will evolve there - just as they will if they get there instead by local abiogenesis, by human creation, or by divine creation. Ultimate origins is irrelevant to the theory of evolution; it merely needs some biological organisms to work with.
> If true (and I dispute that), then evolution needs at least as big a leap of faith as creationism does.
Not at all. It's evidence, not faith, that tells us that the universe is of finite age, and evidence, not faith, that tells us that life now exists in the universe. It follows immediately from those that abiogenesis must have happened somewhere along the way; faith does not play any role in either the premises or the conclusion.
> And again you're fudging things when you say I should accept your probabilities for divine abiogenesis.
Not at all. If you want me to accept numbers that you pulled out of your ass, then it's perfectly reasonable for me to expect you to accept numbers that I pulled out of my ass.
> Since there definitely is a God, there is no need to calculate the probability of Him existing.
That sort of argument is known as "assuming the consequent", "begging the question", or, in layman's terms, "cheating".
> Want proof? Where did all the matter, physical laws, order, information, and initial energy come from?
Not from any god. Want proof? Where did your god come from?
See, it's easy if I get to use the same low standards of evidence that creationists insist on for their own arguments.
[Lurkers please note that I don't offer that as a serious argument. Rather, I offer it as an example of how creationists will reject an argument with a logical form identical to their own arguments, if it does not lead to the "right" conclusion.]
> If evolution does not include abiogenesis, you'd better go tell your local school board - it's in the textbooks with lots of other lies about evolution.
Oddly enough, solar dynamics, kinematics, cloud formation, Turing machines, electic circuits, and a pile of other things that the theory of evolution doesn't say anything about are also to be found in textbooks. You single out abiogenesis only because of your ignorance (and presumably also because it, even more than evolution, is directly contrary to your religious beliefs).
Curiouser yet, none of those textbooks invoke invisible magicians to explain any of those other phenomena, and yet for some reason no one is writing their school boards and legislatures to protest that omission.
> If evolution is to have any scientific meaning whatsoever it must have predictive value. Mere retrospection is no more valuable than claiming that God created everything 6000 years ago.
I don't know whether I agree with that, but at any rate it doesn't matter because the theory of evolution does have predictive value. E.g., every time a new genome is sequenced it tells us some things to expect and some things not to expect. It also tells us which rocks to look at for trilobite fossils in and which ones to skip over, how big the hind legs on a proto-whale discovered at a given time depth will be, etc.
Just because the ToE is a "historical science", doesn't mean that new observations are not possible, nor that it doesn't make predictions.
> 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?
> Where did he get the billion dollar estimate from? I see no direct correspondance between lines of code and monetary value.
Using his numbers, I calculate that my part time effort on a hobby project over the last 9 months has resulted in a quarter of a million dollars worth of code.
> could this be living proof of the evolutionary path that aquatic creatures took to make it to land many millions (billions) of years ago? looks like it to me:-) I love hearing about this.
Not "proof", but a good demonstration of principle.
In fact this is hardly news among biologists. Things like the mudskipper and other "walking fish" are well known to them, however ignorant we outsiders may be, and biologists have long held that tetrapods ("four-leggers") evolved from what they call "lobe-finned fish", which are distinguished from "ray-finned fish" because their fins are fleshy lobes with muscles and bones that are somewhat similar to the limb bones of amphibians, dinosaurs, mammals, etc., quite unlike the simple spines that make up the fins of the "ray-finned fish". Lobe-finned fish exist both in the wild today and in the fossil record, and the oldest fossil amphibians have skeletons that show only very minor differences from lobe-finned fish of the same era.
Current thought is that the "proto-limbs" (if you will excuse the hindsight) evolved for underwater use and just happened to be convenient for exploiting the resources on dry land, rather than evolving as a direct adaptation to life on dry land. Indeed, if you watch nature documentaries then once in a great while you will see a modern lobe-finned fish in action, using its fins/limbs to push itself along the bottom or through a tangle of vegetation, without the least sign of awkwardness.
> An argument sometimes used against Darwinian evolution is that something in between species A and B couldn't compete with the fully functional A creatures now in their prime, nor would it yet have the equipment needed to be a successful B.
And its one of the more egregiously bad arguments offered by a group already well known for offering bad arguments, since even preschoolers know about whales, seals, walruses, otters, beavers, and a bunch of other "acquatic mammals" living various shades of intermediate lifestyles. (And of course everyone's favorite intermediate form, penguins.)
This indicates that the primary fault of creationists isn't mere ignorance, but rather an underlying unwillingness to think.
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> I recently had a very interesting conversation with the person responsible for maintaining around 3000 systems, mostly Linux.
Forgive me, I was thinking userbase rather than number of boxes. The number of boxes is substantially lower than that, though I don't know exactly how much lower. Still large enough to provoke here whinge about commodity {hard,soft}ware.
> kNIGits says: "Mr Joe Average is someone who wants to install their OS, boot it up, and it works. He wants to be able to upgrade his PC , and have the hardware work in a few short minutes.
Mr. Joe Average doesn't install his OS, nor does he upgrade his hardware, unless you count plugging in a peripheral as an "upgrade".
> If anyone out there is support an installation of over 1000 linux desktops I would like to know their experiences.
I recently had a very interesting conversation with the person responsible for maintaining around 3000 systems, mostly Linux.
She hates Linux - for the same reason that she hates Windows, Intel, and AMD. She hates commodity stuff because it's always changing. Order a dozen computers and install them; order a dozen more a month later, and they're completely different. Different hardware, different software. So over a few years of stepwise upgrades/replacements in your large farm of servers/desktops, you end up with a mix of small numbers of many variants.
From the maintenance POV, the best experience comes from buying commodity hardware/software combos from Sun or the like, where you can get more of the same when you need to order some more.
But who wants the five year old state of the art on their desktop? There seems to be a direct trade-off between providing the best user experience and providing the best maintainer experience, at least when you're talking about large numbers of boxes.
> The little shot at windows is a bit unfair there. Have you tried out Win2k? I see uptimes of 60+ days no problem,
WooHoo! 60+ days!
You don't have to look very hard to find UNIX boxes that have been up since before W2K was released.
> and usually the uptime is only killed by a driver upgrade or some other reboot like that.
Yeah, reboots do tend to reduce your average uptime.
> What's wrong with how OSS software is being written now?
... the larger projects have sponsors or full time developers by companies that use the software, I don't really see a need for something like this.
> Lot's of people having itches, lots of people scratching them
That's probably the most sensible response so far.
But the lame idea does suggest other ideas. For example, we could write our applications to show splash screens that displayed the latest EFF legislation alert, stuff like that.
> Well, there's plenty of precedent for this.
An even better precedent for it is Windows 9x, which, when started, displays what one wit has described as "an advertisement for a product you already bought".
> One of the comments I saw that was really cool was screensaver advertising.
How 'bout ads that only run when you're powered down?
> just imagine when (not if) microsoft figures this out and all those poor bastards using Windows QX 2003 Amateur have to put up with ads for mouse pointers.
LMAO. You should patent that really quick - if only to keep someone from actually doing it.
But think of the upgrade options!
> Once when I load? Isn't one of the biggest selling points of *nix in general the high uptime?
.
Heh heh heh. I log in exactly once per incident of {new system purchase, hardware upgrade, OS upgrade, hardware failure}. Right now, that's 125 days at home and 256 days at work. I'd see about two ads a year, unless they figured a way to force an ad back down the pipe whenever I do ssh remothost dosomething
Good luck selling the ads for enough to cover the costs of tracking down suckers to buy them.
Why use something that pesters me with ads when I can get something that works plenty well enough, pester-free?
Also, how well have advertisement-based Web sites worked out?
And what's next, advertisement-based CDs? A chorus of "Army of One" between the verses of the latest ballet-band's shoveware "hit"?
> ...to be worth 4 and 5 nines of reliability.
It's understandable that 100% reliability would look seem engineering overkill to you, Master Baiter, but for the rest of us it's essential.
> Too Bad that a lot of the servers on the top 50 uptime list still have the default page that apache provides. I'm sure it isn't too difficult to keep them running - just make sure the power is on and the network cable is plugged in.
Historically, some very popular and widely sold operating systems couldn't even do that much.
> I call bullsh*t on anything that claims to have 9 9s reliability. 3 seconds every HUNDRED years.
Heh. Last night when Jay Leno did his newspaper clippings, one was an ad for a "500 Year Clock" - that came with a one year warranty.
Maybe we should start a shop selling 9 9s at top dollar, but only giving a one year warranty?
> Well, not *all* of the background is ill-conceived. The Jedi are a great idea...
Sorry; I meant to indicate the virgin birth, chloro-midgets, and all the other crap served up in E1 in order to try to make the whole thing hang together.
> Movies, series, whatever all ends. Well, the way Star Wars is going, it's going into the shitter. Overall, people dont like ep 1, and they hate ep2. ANd if you were around back then, you oughtta remember why Star Wars was popular. Hint: It wasnt the plot (try special fx). They just created more shows for revenue. They were just hooks to continue the first one.
Amen, brother!
SW was actually pretty dumb by any objective criterion, but it worked as a movie because it was just a space opera / action flick with no goals other than to have and give a good time.
Unfortunately, the Joseph Campbell connection came up, the media and the fans took it way too seriously, and Lucas tried too hard to deliver on it in the next show and a half, but he just couldn't deliver serious flickature.
And perhaps he realized that it wasn't working after ESB, because while continuing to try to follow through with the "heavy" stuff in RotJ, he also added in heroic teddybears for the kiddies.
And as if he hadn't mucked things up enough by that point, by the time he got around to doing E1 he completely dropped the attempts at a "heavy" story, but unfortunately, instead of returning to the mindless fun of SW he just left a huge gap in the motivations: the series was now "about" itself. So we got a meandering story with ill-conceived background concepts to help shove the plot forward, continued overkill kiddie-appeal, and an unmotivated dazzle of special effects to try to glue all that uninteresting stuff together into the blockbuster the public expected of him.
Now, I'd like to continue this analysis through E2, but sadly, I didn't bother going to see it. There's better stuff on television.
So what's Lucas' legacy?
When he tried to give us a good time, he gave us a good time.
When he tried to be great, he flopped.
When he kept going without a focus, he made a fool out of himself.
Now cereal box treats are the most enduring legacy of the grandly conceived nonolgy.
And what's his solution for this?
More of the same! Bugger off, Spielberg, fans, and critics! There's a trilogy to be finished! (I forget why I'm making it, but it's got to be done!) Bring on the animators! Call up Burger King and Pizza Hut! The show must go on!
> I get *hell* from customs for sneaking Mighty Taco [mightytaco.com] across the border, and yet these nasty things are available in any large Asian community?
Leave the baggie of pot out and they'll wave you right through.
And yet another "UNIX killer" falls off the end of the upgrade treadmill.
> Trademark. Not copyright.
I hope you're not suggesting that I'm not going to be rich when I get out of the pokey.
I have a get-rich-quick plan: copyright your name, streak the Superbowl, get caught on purpose, and sue all the newspapers that use your name without permission when they report the story.
> You are making a classic probstat error...
d00d! You forgot the most important part of your post, which should have gone something like this: And though it's optional, I heartily recommend adding the following disclaimer as well: But having made your bed, let's see how well you lie in it.
First, let me call to the attention of any innocents reading this post that your probability argument - like all creationist probability arguments I've ever seen - relies critically on a hidden assumption that life is a completely random assemblage of atomic components. Lurkers my want to speculate, publicly or privately, why creationists always make this (hidden) assumption; my own speculation is that it's a combinaton fo these three factors:
- the typical creationist knows exactly diddley-jack about the natural sciences, and thus couldn't assume a more realistic mechanism even if he wanted to; and
- admitting that the arrangements of the molecules in biological organisms is the result of laws and forces that bias the outcome runs a great risk of unwittingly admitting that the mechanisms proposed by the theory of evolution really work; and
- any assumption other than completely random configurations with uniform probabilities will not produce the astonomical numbers needed to impress the rubes with an otherwise silly argument.
At any rate, giving AC his desired probability model, and given that the universe exists and the matter in his protein actually exists, we find that there is a truly astronomical number of possible configurations for that matter - probably a higher number even than he calculates - with the resulting possiblility of any single one of those configurations existing - given his assumptions - being <<1/10^50, and thus "impossible". However, given that the universe and the matter in the protein does exist, we conclude that the probability that it is in one of those configurations is 1.0 - just as for the outcome of shuffling a deck of cards.So much for creationist probability arguments; they don't even rise to their own standards, let alone to the standards of science.
> You further speculate that there was a non-oxygen atmosphere in the past which the proteins arose in.
No, that's based on evidence, not speculation. For instance, the iron in all your worldly goods was accessible to human miners because it precipitated out of the oceans en masse when the atmosphere "turned over" to an oxygen-based atmosphere and oxidized it. Otherwise it would be (more or less) randomly distributed throughout the crust.
There is other evidence for our pre-oxygen atmosphere; you might want to read up on it if this sort of thing interests you and your faith doesn't rely too much on isolating yourself from facts about the world you live in.
> That's because if you don't have very accurate reproduction, you'll get random mutations which, by the laws of probstat, will degenerate most of the organisms via a mechanism known as "return to the mean".
There is no such mechanism; do not misinterpret the "law of large numbers" as a programmed directional shift. You seem to be one who knows just enough about statistics to be dangerous.
Also very importantly, do not critique the theory of evolution on the basis of a straw-model that omits an enormously important part of the theory, natural selection. (And sexual selection and all that other good stuff you'll hear about if you ever get past them metaphorical Page One in your knowledge of the theory of evolution.)
Hint: Sundayschool ain't the place to learn about it.
> You're claiming that evolution does not involve abiogenesis.
Indeed I am, and that's because it doesn't. The theory of evolution says nothing about where life came from. Terraform a planet and pack off your favorite species for a permanent visit, and you'll find that they will evolve there - just as they will if they get there instead by local abiogenesis, by human creation, or by divine creation. Ultimate origins is irrelevant to the theory of evolution; it merely needs some biological organisms to work with.
> If true (and I dispute that), then evolution needs at least as big a leap of faith as creationism does.
Not at all. It's evidence, not faith, that tells us that the universe is of finite age, and evidence, not faith, that tells us that life now exists in the universe. It follows immediately from those that abiogenesis must have happened somewhere along the way; faith does not play any role in either the premises or the conclusion.
> And again you're fudging things when you say I should accept your probabilities for divine abiogenesis.
Not at all. If you want me to accept numbers that you pulled out of your ass, then it's perfectly reasonable for me to expect you to accept numbers that I pulled out of my ass.
> Since there definitely is a God, there is no need to calculate the probability of Him existing.
That sort of argument is known as "assuming the consequent", "begging the question", or, in layman's terms, "cheating".
> Want proof? Where did all the matter, physical laws, order, information, and initial energy come from?
Not from any god. Want proof? Where did your god come from?
See, it's easy if I get to use the same low standards of evidence that creationists insist on for their own arguments.
[Lurkers please note that I don't offer that as a serious argument. Rather, I offer it as an example of how creationists will reject an argument with a logical form identical to their own arguments, if it does not lead to the "right" conclusion.]
> If evolution does not include abiogenesis, you'd better go tell your local school board - it's in the textbooks with lots of other lies about evolution.
Oddly enough, solar dynamics, kinematics, cloud formation, Turing machines, electic circuits, and a pile of other things that the theory of evolution doesn't say anything about are also to be found in textbooks. You single out abiogenesis only because of your ignorance (and presumably also because it, even more than evolution, is directly contrary to your religious beliefs).
Curiouser yet, none of those textbooks invoke invisible magicians to explain any of those other phenomena, and yet for some reason no one is writing their school boards and legislatures to protest that omission.
> If evolution is to have any scientific meaning whatsoever it must have predictive value. Mere retrospection is no more valuable than claiming that God created everything 6000 years ago.
I don't know whether I agree with that, but at any rate it doesn't matter because the theory of evolution does have predictive value. E.g., every time a new genome is sequenced it tells us some things to expect and some things not to expect. It also tells us which rocks to look at for trilobite fossils in and which ones to skip over, how big the hind legs on a proto-whale discovered at a given time depth will be, etc.
Just because the ToE is a "historical science", doesn't mean that new observations are not possible, nor that it doesn't make predictions.
> 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.
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,
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?
> Where did he get the billion dollar estimate from? I see no direct correspondance between lines of code and monetary value.
Using his numbers, I calculate that my part time effort on a hobby project over the last 9 months has resulted in a quarter of a million dollars worth of code.
Any takers?
> Basically, this means that the estimate could be anywhere from $100M->10B in true cost.
So if you're buying argue for $100M, but if you're selling then politely suggest that $10B is more accurate.
> could this be living proof of the evolutionary path that aquatic creatures took to make it to land many millions (billions) of years ago? looks like it to me
Not "proof", but a good demonstration of principle.
In fact this is hardly news among biologists. Things like the mudskipper and other "walking fish" are well known to them, however ignorant we outsiders may be, and biologists have long held that tetrapods ("four-leggers") evolved from what they call "lobe-finned fish", which are distinguished from "ray-finned fish" because their fins are fleshy lobes with muscles and bones that are somewhat similar to the limb bones of amphibians, dinosaurs, mammals, etc., quite unlike the simple spines that make up the fins of the "ray-finned fish". Lobe-finned fish exist both in the wild today and in the fossil record, and the oldest fossil amphibians have skeletons that show only very minor differences from lobe-finned fish of the same era.
Current thought is that the "proto-limbs" (if you will excuse the hindsight) evolved for underwater use and just happened to be convenient for exploiting the resources on dry land, rather than evolving as a direct adaptation to life on dry land. Indeed, if you watch nature documentaries then once in a great while you will see a modern lobe-finned fish in action, using its fins/limbs to push itself along the bottom or through a tangle of vegetation, without the least sign of awkwardness.
> An argument sometimes used against Darwinian evolution is that something in between species A and B couldn't compete with the fully functional A creatures now in their prime, nor would it yet have the equipment needed to be a successful B.
And its one of the more egregiously bad arguments offered by a group already well known for offering bad arguments, since even preschoolers know about whales, seals, walruses, otters, beavers, and a bunch of other "acquatic mammals" living various shades of intermediate lifestyles. (And of course everyone's favorite intermediate form, penguins.)
This indicates that the primary fault of creationists isn't mere ignorance, but rather an underlying unwillingness to think.