That's one point Dawkins makes that I'm quite fond of. A self-replicating molecule may be improbable, but it only had to happen once.

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(April 8, 2014 at 11:58 pm)Heywood Wrote: Negative Tor, the fail is on you.

My example shows that a possible event doesn't have to have a positive probability when throw infinities into the mix.

There are not an infinite number of planets.
Why assume 1 red marble?

Go home. You're drunk.

(April 9, 2014 at 10:42 am)Heywood Wrote: You reject the notion that there is only on red marble in the bin? That's silly. Its a thought experiment...and now you're changing the parameters of it so that you can reject the conclusion. Classic strawmanning you are doing.

Okay, so we can safely say you also don't know what a strawman is, because for it to be a strawman I would have to be implying that what I'm saying is your position, when what I'm actually doing is correcting an issue I find with the position you do have.

Quote:But what is hilarious about your strawman argument is that it still fails! The thought experiment works if there are 2 red marbles in the bin, or 4 or even an infinite number of red marbles in the bin. All that is needed for it be logically possible that a red marble is never drawn is that there are infinite number of white marbles.

Infinities fuck with probabilities in weird ways.

It's possible that the red marble would never be drawn, but that doesn't mean it's impossible It just means it's improbable, and as I keep saying, improbable is not the same as impossible.

Additionally, there's more problems with your analogy than I think you realize; what if there's an infinite number of red marbles? The only thing you can safely say is that life as we know it can only exist in this small band of existence, but to extrapolate that out and say that this is the only "red marble" there is is overreaching. You're merely assuming that all the other marbles will be white, when you have no idea. What if you opened the lid to a bin of nothing but red marbles? Or an infinity of red marbles studded with a few white ones?

What if the number isn't infinite, and there are indeed finite possibilities? What if there's more than one bin, or you can draw marbles for an infinity of time? You just don't know, making your entire analogy an argument from ignorance, as well as a profound misunderstanding of probability.

Again.

(April 9, 2014 at 10:50 am)ThePinsir Wrote: That's one point Dawkins makes that I'm quite fond of. A self-replicating molecule may be improbable, but it only had to happen once.

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(April 8, 2014 at 11:58 pm)Heywood Wrote: Negative Tor, the fail is on you.

My example shows that a possible event doesn't have to have a positive probability when throw infinities into the mix.

There are not an infinite number of planets.
Why assume 1 red marble?

Go home. You're drunk.

Pinsir, you have to pay attention. I'm not talking about planets. Tor made a ridiculously wrong claim that has nothing to do with planets. The ridiculously wrong claim he made that I am responding to is this:

"when you have infinite amount of events it's not the probability that is important but a possibility. If something is possible it happens cause there is such a huge number of events. Life is possible. Therefore it happens."

It is ridiculously wrong because just because something is possible doesn't mean it has a positive probability when you throw infinities into the mix. Just because something is possible doesn't mean it will come to fruition even after an infinite number of trials. It is trivially easy to show that he was wrong with the marble example.

Why does it have to be marbles?? Why cant it be gum balls? Yum!!

(April 9, 2014 at 11:21 am)truthBtold Wrote: Why does it have to be marbles?? Why cant it be gum balls? Yum!!

It can be gum balls if you want. Or gummie bears. What fuck things up is infinities.

When you throw in infinities you can have things with a positive probability that still never come to fruition even after infinite number of trials.

An example of such is something in which the probability decreases after each trial. For instance suppose you start out with a 6 sided die. The goal is to roll a number that matches the number of sides on the die. However the twist is after each roll a new side is added to the die. This magical side growing die can be rolled an infinite number of times and never roll a number that matches the number of sides of the die.

(April 9, 2014 at 11:31 am)Heywood Wrote: When you throw in infinities you can have things with a positive probability that still never come to fruition even after infinite number of trials.

If you have an infinite number of trials, by definition you'll exhaust every possibility.

(April 8, 2014 at 11:15 pm)Napoléon Wrote: We are the smartest form of life ever to exist on this planet and it's took an awful long time of life existing for us to show up and even develop into a species that is doing anything other than rolling around in the dirt. Only in the past 4000 years or so has humanity started to monopolise the planet, yet life has existed for billions of years.

Is wrecking the planet we live on all that smart?

World Health Organisation -7 million premature deaths annually linked to air pollution

BBC News - Toxic Waste 'major global threat'

We're living in a time of mass extinctions, most of which are caused by human activity. It's possible that the end result will be humans becoming extinct as well. Meanwhile, cockroaches have been around for millions of years and are one of the most adaptable species on the planet. It's likely that they'll survive even if humans don't. If this happens it would mean that rolling around in the dirt is an evolutionary success while our big brains turned out to be an evolutionary failure.

(April 8, 2014 at 11:21 pm)tor Wrote: I would say there is 100% chance there is life smarter than us.
They simply evolved earlier than us. And became smarter earlier than us.

That would be a fine assumption to make if evolution necessarily aimed towards intelligence. It simply doesn't.

(April 9, 2014 at 11:39 am)Confused Ape Wrote: Is wrecking the planet we live on all that smart?

No, but we're the only species ever to escape the bounds of our own world. I'd say that puts us above the rest.

(April 9, 2014 at 11:39 am)Esquilax Wrote:

(April 9, 2014 at 11:31 am)Heywood Wrote: When you throw in infinities you can have things with a positive probability that still never come to fruition even after infinite number of trials.

If you have an infinite number of trials, by definition you'll exhaust every possibility.

Negative Esquilax.

Some infinities can be insufficient.

Imagine a circle. Now imagine an infinite number of rays originating at the center of the circle and passing thru every point that makes up the perimeter. At the perimeter those rays, as they pass thru each point which makes up the circle are "touching each other". However once they go beyond the perimeter those rays continue to diverge. The farther away from the perimeter the more diverged from each other those rays become. So far so good?

Now draw a larger circle around the first one. There are an infinite number of rays coming from the smaller circle but that infinite number of rays is insufficient to go thru every point that makes up the perimeter of the larger circle. In that space between the divergent rays will exist points that make up the larger circle that have no rays going thru them.

You would think that because you have an infinite number of rays...you would have enough to go thru all the points that make up the larger circle....but you do not.