http://blogofthecosmos.com/2016/02/11/the-happenstance-of-existence/
QuoteThe mere happenstance of a coincidental sequence of events, put together by the blind works of nature, has serendipitously manifested itself in this fascinating complexity around us today, that only appears to bear the illusion of an orderly calibration of deliberate design. This happenstance of undirected natural processes has led to self-directed sentient beings, pondering upon such questions of deep significance.
The great biologist Jacques Monod, writing of the natural process of evolution, described it as an interplay of “chance and necessityâ€. He says “pure chance absolutely free, but blind, lies at the basis of this stupendous edifice of evolution.†Absolute random processes embellish the details of evolution and introduce random variations that the process of natural selection then deterministically directs. The process of natural selection is able to extract “from a noise source all the music of the biosphereâ€. Might humans not have evolved at all, had the process of evolution gone differently? In contemplating this issue, the late Stephen Jay Gould devised a useful metaphor. He pictured the history of life as the videotape of a movie. What would happen if one were to rewind this tape of life and harken back to a point very early, effectively deleting all the evolutionary progression that has occurred, and then rerunning the tape such that it could be shaped by a completely different chain of events? Would a different evolutionary scheme emerge? According to Gould, evolution is a contingent process, replete with countless branches and various possible courses of direction. This means that if we were to play the tape of life once again, we would get a very different set of organisms. The multitude of organisms that exist today represent just a possible outcome of the plethora of others that could have otherwise existed. “Any replay of the tape would lead evolution down a pathway radically different from the road actually takenâ€, writes Gould. “Each step proceeds for a cause, but no finale can be specified at the start, and none would ever occur a second time in the same way, because any pathway proceeds through thousands of improbable stages. Alter any event, ever so slightly and without apparent importance at the time, and evolution cascades into a radically different channel.â€
QuoteRerunning the tape of life more forward, would we exist today if it were not for the chance collision of a Mars-sized planet with the developing Earth, belting out debris that were captured by Earth’s gravity to coalesce into our moon? In its later stages of formation, Earth was indeed lucky that it had grown to a large enough size such that it was hit by a colliding protoplanet to eventually lead to the formation of the moon. The formation of the moon was indeed quite significant because it stabilised Earth’s obliquity (the tilt angle of Earth’s axis relative to its axis around the sun) â€" an effect, without which, there would have been pronounced variations in climatic and atmospheric patterns, with potentially serious ramifications for life. The collision was large enough to account for the 23.5 degree obliquity that Earth exhibits, which leads to the seasonal variability that life thrives upon.
Could the processes that led the formation of Earth otherwise have led to the formation of planet with a differing chemical composition, accompanied by alternative ramifications for whatever life that might then be able to evolve?
Rerunning the tape of life even more forward, would we exist today if it were not for the chance collision of an asteroid impact, wiping out the dinosaurs and giving way for the diversification of mammals and the evolution of man? What would have happened if that asteroid had missed Earth and spared the dinosaurs in the process?
It seems that all we see around today us is the result of some sort of happenstance of unintentional processes that led to the universe and life as we know it. That eventually led to sentient conscious beings reflecting upon their origins and musing on such profound questions. Beings who would eventually take destiny into their own hands, understand the natural processes that created them, and leave footprints on another world.
We are all extremely lucky to be alive.
Longer article, so link and read. For all you phisophicators hyar abouts. I'm working on a boat. Bye.
It's called philosophical platitudes: rerun the tape, things could have been different, blah, blah, blah...
What, no references to Sartre? I am disappoint JP. :biggrin:
Quote from: stromboli on February 11, 2016, 11:16:55 AM
What, no references to Sartre? I am disappoint JP. :biggrin:
After reading NO EXIT in college - "L'enfer, c'est les autres" - I didn't need to read any more of that stuff. At the time, it just didn't go well with my enthusiasm for physics. And I don't have any regrets.
Same here. I had one (1) philosophy class for my major. I got an A because I referenced "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance" a couple of times and apparently impressed the professor. Read some Kant and some John Locke along the way. Daresay I got more useful philosophy from Samuel Clemens in "Roughing It".
It's good to be reminded of from where I come. If things had gone differently, I might have been a crystalline life form with fleeting bits of consciousness. I'm grateful to be a homo sapiens....the smartest lifeform in the universe!
Quote from: gentle_dissident on February 11, 2016, 12:12:37 PM
It's good to be reminded of from where I come. If things had gone differently, I might have been a crystalline life form with fleeting bits of consciousness. I'm grateful to be a homo sapiens....the smartest lifeform in the universe!
So far as we know.......
Trying to use classical statistics or even quantum statistics to justify the current reality, or to justify free will ... is a losing gambit in philosophy. Not worthy of a philosophical response, because it is reductionism, and reductionism is reductio ad absurdum.
I take current reality as a given, and my free will as a given. They are axioms, not theorems.
Nope. It's all by design. Just look around. If it was all just random, why do we have cows? Cows are nice. Man and cows are such a perfect match that they had to be designed. And how about fish? They are clearly designed. If it was just random, fish might be living on land. The designer put them in the water so they could swim around. If it were all random, a hippopotamus might be as small as a mouse, and you wouldn't have to run away from one. Hardly anything would be like it's supposed to be. You don't need to go to college to understand this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A
Quote from: gentle_dissident on February 11, 2016, 12:12:37 PM
It's good to be reminded of from where I come. If things had gone differently, I might have been a crystalline life form with fleeting bits of consciousness. I'm grateful to be a homo sapiens....the smartest lifeform in the universe!
Vulcans are smarter.
It is kind of humbling, I think, to contemplate the billions of years of survival that preceeded my own existence, I have an unbroken genealogy all the way back to the beginnings of life, whatever form that may have taken.
Based on the happenstance, there is probably about 1 chance in +- a billion of the right set of factors occurring in the right order to produce life. But since there are billions of possibilities it is equally likely that there are very few if any sentient life forms, and just as likely that there is a planet where 9 foot tall adults that are born with 300+ IQs that all look like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and are all named Marvin.
I take it all with a grain of salt. Which explains my water retention issues. :biggrin:
=
Quote from: Solomon Zorn on February 12, 2016, 07:15:36 AM
Vulcans are smarter.
It is kind of humbling, I think, to contemplate the billions of years of survival that preceeded my own existence, I have an unbroken genealogy all the way back to the beginnings of life, whatever form that may have taken.
Yes, your lineage began at a time when thankfully, the atmosphere was mostly devoid of oxygen, which would have killed you. But as life expanded, that one toxic waste product started showing up in dangerous abundance. It seems like life was shitting in it's very nest, and then had to go about evolving to survive in the toxic environment it had created. Your ancestors were in a constant struggle for survival, with nephews and cousins being continually wiped out at alarming rates.
It's amazing that you are here today, because at every turn of events, the odds were most definitely against you. And I'm not talking about long shot odds like 200 to 1. No they were millions of times worse than that. You shouldn't be here at all, but somehow, a lucky ancestor survived against the odds. Actually, every one of them did. If only one of them had failed to survive, you wouldn't be here. There were millions of strokes of good fortune that had to line up perfectly for you to be here at all.
And after all that selecting out and beating the odds over millennia I wound up fat with a skinny ass. Go figure.
Quote from: SGOS on February 11, 2016, 09:33:54 PM
Nope. It's all by design. Just look around. If it was all just random, why do we have cows? Cows are nice. Man and cows are such a perfect match that they had to be designed. And how about fish? They are clearly designed. If it was just random, fish might be living on land. The designer put them in the water so they could swim around. If it were all random, a hippopotamus might be as small as a mouse, and you wouldn't have to run away from one. Hardly anything would be like it's supposed to be. You don't need to go to college to understand this.
Yeah, what you just said. I saw a video the other day (don't remember the names of the two idiots presenting it--two guys, one older and the other a child star turned christian); one was holding a banana and was telling the other why it was proof of god. The banana was the perfect size, and was the perfect food and was perfectly packaged as only god could do it. So, there--that proves it; all is perfect and of god who is perfect.........................made me want to throw up and not even look at bananas again.
Quote from: gentle_dissident on February 11, 2016, 12:12:37 PM
If things had gone differently, I might have been a crystalline life form with fleeting bits of consciousness.!
I am not all the sure that we don't have several of those wandering through here now.....
Quote from: Mike Cl on February 12, 2016, 09:40:18 AM
Yeah, what you just said. I saw a video the other day (don't remember the names of the two idiots presenting it--two guys, one older and the other a child star turned christian); one was holding a banana and was telling the other why it was proof of god. The banana was the perfect size, and was the perfect food and was perfectly packaged as only god could do it. So, there--that proves it; all is perfect and of god who is perfect.........................made me want to throw up and not even look at bananas again.
Yeah, the Banana guy. Bananas are OK. I'm not particularly partial to them. Bananas are hardly the best defense of creationism. He could have thought of something better, albeit stupidly better.
Quote from: Mike Cl on February 12, 2016, 09:40:18 AM
Yeah, what you just said. I saw a video the other day (don't remember the names of the two idiots presenting it--two guys, one older and the other a child star turned christian); one was holding a banana and was telling the other why it was proof of god. The banana was the perfect size, and was the perfect food and was perfectly packaged as only god could do it. So, there--that proves it; all is perfect and of god who is perfect.........................made me want to throw up and not even look at bananas again.
Ha, beat you to it in post #9...
And here we have it, ladies and gentlemen. The current end result of millions of years of evolutionary selection
(http://worleygig.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/big-fat-limbaugh.jpg)
Quote from: stromboli on February 12, 2016, 11:58:11 AM
And here we have it, ladies and gentlemen. The current end result of millions of years of evolutionary selection
(http://worleygig.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/big-fat-limbaugh.jpg)
He had help.
(https://veggiemacabre.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/coconnor_l.jpg)
Lol. The human of the future......
Limbaugh has the finer cigar, but Bunker is less pretentious.
I think of Limbaugh as that face you always wanted to jump up and down on. With cleats.
Quote from: josephpalazzo on February 12, 2016, 10:28:35 AM
Ha, beat you to it in post #9...
Ha! Well, I'll be damned--you did. :)
Quote from: stromboli on February 12, 2016, 09:32:38 AM
And after all that selecting out and beating the odds over millennia I wound up fat with a skinny ass. Go figure.
If you were really lucky, you would have been a cat ;-) ... they have round bellies and a skinny ass too. And humans would serve you.
Quote from: aitm on February 12, 2016, 10:08:30 AM
I am not all the sure that we don't have several of those wandering through here now.....
Yes, some posters are rather brittle crystalline life forms ...