From: Eric Watt Forste (arkuat@idiom.com)
Date: Wed Nov 24 1999 - 18:51:58 MST
>>Perhaps Universe is so young that we are the first kids on the
>>block.
On Wed, 24 Nov 1999, Rob Harris <rob@hbinternet.co.uk> wrote:
> Consider the number of stars in this galaxy, and then the number
> of galaxies in the universe, and then the fact that our galaxy is
> far from the most outward-lying (ancient). For us to be No.1 in
> this universe would be quite incredible luck. In fact, I'm sure I
> couldn't even write the odds in standard form and fit all the digits
> on all the computers on earth.
Um, since when is outward-lying the same as ancient? Outward lying
from what, anyway? Our own galaxy is the *most* ancient galaxy that
we can observe, because we are looking into the past at younger
and younger galaxies as we look further away.
We simply do not yet know how improbable the spontaneous origin of
self-reproducing molecules is. Perhaps it is extraordinarily
improbable. Perhaps not. Given all the actual evidence we have at
the moment, we can say that it has happened at least once in Universe
to date. I don't see any basis there for making any estimates of
probability or improbability. I haven't studied Bayesian
techniques very much yet, but you certainly can't tackle this
one with resampling.
So, you state that the odds written in standard form would be a
very large number of digits. But this is no reason to believe
that those aren't what the odds actually are.
-- arkuat
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