Re: Developing a focused set of questions for IDists - Comments encouraged


Robert Carnegie wrote:
jack.mollier@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Incidentally, if you randomly select a base 4 encoding, mapping 0-3
onto ACTG, you will find sections of various genomes that "encode" a
large number of consecutive digits of Pi. If that is the signal you
are suggesting, you need to explain not only why that would indicate
design but also what would be expected if no designer were involved.

I think not "large" if there is no mathematician Designer. The longer
the sequence, the less likely. Thus a bible-code message "KILL SHRUB"
is much more likely than "ASSASSINATE PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH". (Maybe
the Echelon guys would like to enlighten us further regarding
false-positive coded messages.)


In fact, the entire human genome can probably be found within the
digits of pi (making some reasonable assumptions about what constitutes
a sequence).

Pi is conjectured to be "normal", that is, random in a certain
mathematical sense. Statistical analysis of billions of digits of pi
indicates they have a random distribution, and recent mathematical work
has revealed that pi's digits have certain chaotic patterns strongly
supporting the conjecture.
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/pi-random.html

As every finite sequence can be found in any infinite random sequence
with probability one, then this suggests that the genome is just a
sequence of digits found in pi, somewhere.

This is a different problem than finding a specific finite sequence
within a longer but still finite sequence such as a genome. Assuming
the genome is random (it's not!), then the chances are less than
certain.

Zachriel
http://zachriel.blogspot.com/

.

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