Chimp genome now mapped

[knightni]

Yet, the atmosphere was still breathable for life no matter what life it was.

[Soxy]

Okay, you can spontaneously have an explosion occur if gases build up somewhere...

 

But it is HIGHLY improbable that the rocks, debris etc. from that explosion can just happen fall into place so that it creates a planet that is 100% perfect for living organisms.

Perhaps the directionality of your statement is wrong--the planet wasn't created "for" the organisms, but the organisms for the enviroment. I know that still doesn't get around your central claim that it is improbable, but I think it's an important question to ask: to what degree are we a product of our enviroment and to what degree was life initially facilitated by the enviroment that allowed the synthesis of the basis of life as we know it.

[knightni]

The fact that there is an environment for ANY living organism is the most improbable fact of all.

[Balta1701]

Okay, you can spontaneously have an explosion occur if gases build up somewhere...

 

But it is HIGHLY improbable that the rocks, debris etc. from that explosion can just happen fall into place so that it creates a planet that is 100% perfect for living organisms.

See, now here's the really interesting one...yes, it is highly improbable that everything would fall together that way...but that's not how it happened.

 

What actually happened is that the conditions for the first life to be created were somehow possible on the early earth. How probable is that? Well, that depends on what the requirements for life are. Clearly you need organic material, liquid water, and an energy input. Those circumstances may in fact be fairly common - they may have happened 3 or 4 times in our solar system alone.

 

Without a good explanataion of exactly what is required for life to start on Earth, I cannot give you exact numbers as to probability, so any attempt to do so would be futile. All I can say is that those are the 3 basic conditions that need to be met, and they are in fact fairly common. What conditions need to exist beyond that? I cannot say, because science has not gotten to that point yet.

 

The reality on Earth is that the history of the Earth has been shaped entirely by the existence of life. CO2 has been dramatically reduced in the atmosphere by life forms taking that CO2, using energy to fix it into organic carbon, and then depositing that carbon in a form which is subducted into the earth. Oxygen has been dramatically increased through this same process. The chemistry of the ocean has been dramatically changed by organisms using different available solutes in a wide variety of ways...removing some solutes from the water, dramatically increasing others. The chemistry of the land has been dramatically changed by the colonization of land by life.

 

The Earth was not "created" in a prime condition for life. When it formed, it formed with the water and organic molecules found throughout the solar system on its surface...something not at all unexpected. From there, once life started, life has shaped the Earth into something ideal for life, and the Earth has shaped that life (through natural selection) into a form that is ideal for survival on that planet.

[Soxy]

The fact that there is an environment for ANY living organism is the most improbable fact of all.

Again, not if the directionality is different. Enviroment wasn't created for organism, organism evolved to survive in enviroment.

[FlaSoxxJim]

This is a good discussion.

 

Like I had said in the other thread, I'd contend that the rapid rise of the Homo line argues quite in favor for natural selection as a driving mechanism rather than against it. Superior phenotypes successfully running the environmental gauntlet where less fit variants cannot, being rewarded by passing on those favorable traits to more and more individuals in successive generations, etc..

 

And though researchers haven't figured out what put the Homo evolutionary line into high gear, that's no reason to suspect natural selection was not the driving force. You suggest 25 million years was not enough time for watershed changes in brain structure and wiring to occur through natural selection, but I don't see it as being very different at all from the rapid adaptive radiation events taht occurred during the Cambrian explosion or after the mass extinction events of the Permian or K-T Boundary. In those cases, new niches opened up and evolution quickly supplied a diversity of forms to successfully fill those niches. I think Homo spp. evolution might be similar, except that it took our arrival at a stage where we could use tools before the new niches opened up. New ways of life became possible because Homo spp. had artificially extended its phenotype by becoming the only tool user in town, and evolution by means of natural selection rapidly filled available niches with a number of different Homo lines - many of which we know to have co-occurred for a good deal of time.

 

As for Darwin calling spontaneous evolution of the vertebrate eye absurd, well, of course he was right. One of the big difficulties for evolutionary biologists has been explaining how small micromutational changes can accumulate into large changes like vertebrate eyes, snake envenomation apparatus, etc. Some of this has been addressed by getting away from Gould's 'what good is looking like half a turd' thinking (eg, when explaining the evolution of crypsis). Dawkins' counter argument is that there are times when the dailing light of dusk is just right and the 'turd bug' is right at the periphery of a predator's vision and it succesfully escapes predation because looking like half a turd was enough in that case. That is the kind of slight phenotypic advantage that can be selected for at a rate just a little more than the wild type at first, but will become increasingly dominant as selection continues, and as incipient turd bugs reproduce and displace less fit variants. And, yes, that's a much simpler story than an eye, but the same concepts apply.

[knightni]

Again, not if the directionality is different. Enviroment wasn't created for organism, organism evolved to survive in enviroment.

That is the toughest statement to prove of all that has been posted here today.

[Balta1701]

The fact that there is an environment for ANY living organism is the most improbable fact of all.

This will be my last post tonight on this topic since I have to go do some reading about crystallization of gabbro under mid-oceanic ridges.

 

Actually...that's not a fact, that's an opinion. Why? Because right now, there simply is no way to quantify what environment a living organism can survive under.

 

In my last post, I laid out what I believe most scientists believe are the 3 requirements for some sort of organic life to form...liquid water, organic molecules, and an energy source.

 

These conditions may have existed on Earth, Mars, Europa, and possibly even Venus or other moons early in the Solar system.

 

To really evaluate your statement that it is a highly improbable event...we need to know what other variables have to be controlled for. Without offering me up any more of those variables (which right now, no one can really do in toto), you cannot give any firm expression for how improbable the sequence of events which gives rise to self replicating organisms truly is.

 

Therefore, you are just asserting your belief that it is highly improbable. I on the other hand would assert that the conditions required certainly existed on 1 early planet in this solar system, and may well have existed on others. Therefore, I would argue that the requirements are not that extreme, and while the probability of life forming may in fact be fairly low...it clearly is non-zero, and may be significantly above zero.

[Soxy]

That is the toughest statement to prove of all that has been posted here today.

If anyone ever says they've "proved" something in science discredit them immediately.

[Gene Honda Civic]

I've never seen my breakfast combine into a living organism all on it's own.

Trust me, Fruity Pebbles + 2% millk + 2 weeks on a window sill = living organism.

[Soxy]

Trust me, Fruity Pebbles + 2% millk + 2 weeks on a window sill = living organism.

I never knew you were a scientist Cheat!

[JUGGERNAUT]

And secondly...and more importantly...a grand unifying theory may lead itself to a discussion of a God, but it does not in any way lend itself to intelligent design in the way you suggest. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Unless you are having fun we should probably stop debating. What's occuring is that you counter me, I counter you, you counter me, I counter you, etc. It's not going to end in either one of us changing each other's opinion. It's like the post prior to yours suggesting that I'm claiming that natural selection is not still at work. I've made no such claim. On the contrary I have emphasized more than once it plays a major role in human evolution. That's present context.

 

I strongly disagree on your statement referring to GUT & QT. The majority of the discussions in physics revolving around God centers around intelligent design governing the Universe. I've not read anything to the contrary.

 

Indeed one of the advanced theories in QT is that thought manifests reality & affects matter. Are you going to claim that's not suggestive of ID?

Edited September 8, 2005 by JUGGERNAUT

[knightni]

Trust me, Fruity Pebbles + 2% millk + 2 weeks on a window sill = living organism.

I think that the mold/mildew that comes from the milk/cereal concoction existed in the environment already. It needed the energy from the milk/cereal to grow and reproduce.

[FlaSoxxJim]

That is the toughest statement to prove of all that has been posted here today.

Soxy's statement is actually very much on the money. It has always been the environment that has dictated what constitutes a fit variant from an unfit variant. When the environment changes, so do the rules, and populations that were wonderfully suited to former conditions then find themselves to be poorly suited to the new ones.

 

And the real kicker is that, since evolution has no way of knowing what a future environment will look like, entire evolutionary lines can find themselves stranded on a former adaptive 'peak' that has now become a mere adaptive 'foothil' (to use Sewell Wright's spatial analogy of a topographic 'adaptive landscape'). They are stranded, without the means to reach the new peak, because in order to do so they would have to throw out eaons of evolutionary modifications and pass through an adaptive 'valley' first, most likely resulting in extinction.

 

Great, great stuff. And Donald Rumsfeld has given us a good analogy. Just as we 'don't go to war with the army we wish we had,' species do not evolve with the fitness ingredients they wish they had, bit only those they actually do have. And it has lead to lots of imperfect evolutionary elaborations. The vertebrate eye is a great example. As Soxy had said, the vertebrate eye will no doubt continue to evolve according to the operant environmental filters, bit it will never acheive "perfection" per se. That is because evolution is forced to proceed with what it has at hand. In the case of the eye, we have a rediculously large blind spot in the dead center of our field of vision because the optic nerve passes through the photoreceptor-bearing retina precisely at this point. Our binocular vision compensates for that, of course, but it is still not the design an optical engineer would ever select if he could tear it all down and start from scratch. And of course, vertebrate evolutionary lines cannot because blindness for several thousand generations would certainly be an insurmountable adaptive valley.

 

Our respiratory and digestive system construction is another example. Why the heck should out trachaeas and esophagus cross one another if such an arrangment invariably leads to clogged windpipes and suffocation? Basically because evolution through natural selection has done the best it could with what it had to work with. Part and parcel to there being no preordained finish line to the whole of organic evoolution, only the goal of perpetuating the most successful forms as abundantly as possible through successive generations.

[JUGGERNAUT]

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Life can evolve in the most harshest conditions imaginable. For the vast majority of evolutionary time spent on this planet life was mostly a primordial soup. The likelihood that such life exists elsewhere in the Universe is high.

 

However the likelihood that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the Universe is extremely low based on the chronology of events that brought us into being.

 

With respect to the further evolution of the human eye we are on the road to being our own intelligent designers. Human cloning, genetic manipulation, cyborg technology are all inevitable consequences of some people's desire to live forever. The fact that we can do it will trump any discussion or barrier on whether we should do it.

 

From here on out natural selection will have little impact on human evolution. The primary influence will be our intelligence & the technology that arises from it.

Edited September 8, 2005 by JUGGERNAUT

[FlaSoxxJim]

Life can evolve in the most harshest conditions imaginable.  For the vast majority of evolutionary time spent on this planet life was mostly a primordial soup.  The likelihood that such life exists elsewhere in the Universe is high.

 

However the likelihood that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the Universe is extremely low based on the chronology of events that brought us into being. 

 

With respect to the further evolution of the human eye we are on the road to being our own intelligent designers.  Human cloning, genetic manipulation, cyborg technology are all inevitable consequences of some people's desire to live forever.  The fact that we can do it will trump any discussion or barrier on whether we should do it. 

 

From here on out natural selection will have little impact on human evolution.  The primary influence will be our intelligence & the technology that arises from it.

 

Yes, photosynthesis first arose about 2.5 billion years ago, with the first primary producers scavenging oxygen from the lithosphere via the more easily oxidized rocks. And oxygen didn't begin to accduumulate in the atmosphere until about a billion years ago, before which there was no radiation of aerobic life forms, nor any ozone layer to protect from UV.

 

(Interestingly, the verdict is still out, but the classic view of life beginning in the mathane-ammonia primordial soup ala' Orey and Miller's classic experiments is currently widely challeged.)

 

I'll disagree with the suggestion that there's not necessarily "higer" life (the equivalent to terran multi-celled eukaryotes; I'll stay away from "intelligent" simply to avoid a side discussion on what intelligence is and what were the forst organisms to demonstrate it) elsewhere in the universe. The mere fact that the chronology of events surrounding organic evolution on earth is unlikelyy to be precisely duplicated doesn't preclude the possibility (or even the likelihood) that other chronologies begat other equally fruitful organic evolutionary pathways.

 

Consider our own chemosynthetic deep sea communities, found near thermal vents or cold methane seeps. They are completely divorced from the need for solar input, demonstrate real heartiness as extreme thermophiles, are tolerant of levels of sulfur compounds, methane, etc., that would be incredibly toxic to most eukaryotic life, and have come up with some unique symbioses to allow the development of comples communities. Until we stumbled on these systems in the late 70s, we couldn't have conceived of their existence.

 

I'd also reject the argument that from here on out natural selection will have little impact on human evolution, regardless of the technological advances we apply to perpetuating the species. We are want we are, and we are that because of natural selection. We enjoy the view frm quite an adaptive peak at the moment, but we may well be incredibly ill-adapted for survival is the environment were to change drastically. We will be weeded out by natural selective pressures while other organic forms that can still make the cut will live on. Technology can and will push these envelopes to be sure, but envelopes are not indefinately elastic; eventually they either snap back or they break.

Edited September 8, 2005 by FlaSoxxJim

[JUGGERNAUT]

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

By intelligent life I would say life capable of creating things like we are.

 

As for the elasticity of technology if we can progress we will progress. When you consider that collective intelligence as it is exhibited via networking today has only been around for about the last 30 years it boggles the mind what our future holds.

 

Futurists from MIT & other prestigious universities will tell you as much

[Balta1701]

In other words, Juggs's definition of intelligent life is "I'll know it when I see it".

[FlaSoxxJim]

Futurists from MIT & other prestigious universities will tell you as much

 

Yeah, if you can make it to the convention, that is. Well, I guess there will always be time for that.

[Balta1701]

Yeah, if you can make it to the convention, that is.  Well, I guess there will always be time for that. 

I'm sitting in a basement office at a school that I chose over MIT and that likes to consider itself a pretty decent rival to that school north of Boston, and I can tell you this...these "futurists" that Juggernaut is referring to as proving ID certainly have eluded me during my time here.

[JUGGERNAUT]

I never mentioned Futurists from MIT & ID in the same sentence nor have I implied anything about them with respect to ID. Though I can easily quote some of them that have spoken on God as it relates to QT & GUT. But that's irrelevant to my reference.

My reference was simply in regards to what our future holds in the next 50 yrs. Short of a catclysmic disater or LEE if we can progress we will progress. That includes conquering the frail nature of our existence.

Edited September 8, 2005 by JUGGERNAUT

[FlaSoxxJim]

I'm sitting in a basement office at a school that I chose over MIT and that likes to consider itself a pretty decent rival to that school north of Boston, and I can tell you this...these "futurists" that Juggernaut is referring to as proving ID certainly have eluded me during my time here.

My reference - possibly aimed an audience of only myself - was in reference to the MIT grad student who held the first. last, and only Time Traveller's Convention last year. His argument was that there on ly needed to be a single convention ever and he didn't need to worry about making the date widely known, because the target audience would have all the time in the world to get there.

 

As far as JUGGERNAUT's definition of intelligence, ok, I can take that at face value and know what he's talking about. I would also argue, of course, that that sort of intelligence (the capacity for rational thought) is an arbitrary and quite poor measure of evolutionary success, on our planet or anywhere else. Cockroaches are exactly as smart as they need to be to be successful cockroaches. Ditto for sharks, sequoyas, and slime molds.

 

The only measure of evolutionary success that means anything is survival such that the best adapted members of one generation in a population is allowed to pass its genes on to the maximum number of individuals in the next generation. Cognative ability is a nifty parlour trick, to be sure, but it's not a prerequisite for evolutionary success.

[JUGGERNAUT]

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

It has always been thought that the cockroaches will out live us. I no longer believe that. I'm certain we will find the means to destroy any species with the advent of nano-tech. It's potential for destructive capacity is at least as equally strong as it's potential for creative capacity.

 

I do not believe that natural selection will be able to overcome a real-time adaptive entity in the species that we control. Nano-tech comes with remote control

[FlaSoxxJim]

Leave the cockroaches alone! :-)

 

Seriously, regardless of whether our future is a cyborg/nanotech future or a live to be 200 years old future or just one very similar to today but with more comfortable shoes, that 'we can kill it so we will win' attitude you just espoused is the thing that will lead us to the grave.

 

Biodiversity is the key to everything, and envisioning a future where we can dispense with it at will is about as dysutopian an image as can be imagined.

 

Those wondrous biotech/nanotech molecular machines that will be able to search and destroy cancer cells in our body – the inspiration for their rational design will in all likelihood come from the living world all around us. Seeing the pharmaceutical promise of some of the biologically-derived experimental drugs currently in clinical or preclinical testing can't help but make you wonder what else is out there to be discovered. More depressing, though, it makes you wonder what has already been lost or will be lost because we're too shortsighted to see the value of preserving biodiversity.

[JUGGERNAUT]

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Cockroaches .. what are they good for .. absolutely nothing. Kill em all! The sooner the better.

 

Seriously, I agree with you on bio-diversity but I also fear that technology will weaken the economic incentive to preserve & nuture it.

 

I for a new economic reality to take hold before then.