Re: Classical Probability, Shakespearean Sonnets, and Multiverse


John Harshman wrote:
rev.goetz wrote:

John Harshman wrote:

rev.goetz wrote:


John Harshman wrote:


rev.goetz wrote:



John Harshman wrote:



rev.goetz wrote:




John Harshman wrote:




rev.goetz wrote:





John Harshman wrote:





rev.goetz wrote:






Craig Franck wrote:






"Desertphile" wrote







r norman wrote:

Everybody with an ounce of knowledge of probability theory understands
that the "monkeys typing Shakespeare" image merely makes the very
abstract distinction between finite and infinite expected waiting time
for an event (or non-zero vs. zero probability). Nobody ever expected
see actual output from those typewriters in the lifetime of the
universe. And that is exactly what our friend has demonstrated.

It is a complete abuse of the notion of how to apply probability
theory to the real world.

Indeed. Nor do I understand why the question appears to be important to
anyone. Who cares how long it would take to chaotically bang on a
keyboard to produce a sonnet of Shakespeare's? It is an utterly
pointless question as far as I know.

I've run across something similar in a fairly recent book on cosmology,
which I admit was a bit whimsical.


I also tend to dismiss hypotheses of World Ensembles. But multiple
millions of dollars of science funding is granted to physicists that
develop models of World Ensembles.

I'm going to doubt this until I see evidence. Presumably these are
highly theoretical physicists who don't have to spend much money on
equipment, technicians, etc. What would they spend their multiple
millions on?


I see the acknowledgement of grants and financial support on many such
journal articles.
I cited some of these articles in my article,

For examples, see J. Garriga and A. Vilenkin, "A Prescription for
Probabilities in Eternal Inflation," Physical Review D 61, 023507
(2000), URL = <http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0102090>; A. Aguirre and S.
Gratton, "Inflation without a Beginning: A Null Boundary Proposal,"
Physical Review D 67, 083515, (2003), URL =
<http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0301042>; L. Susskind, "The Anthropic
Landscape of String Theory," High Energy Physics - Theory (Feb,
2003), URL = <http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0302219>; S.M. Carroll. "Is
Our Universe Natural," High Energy Physics - Theory (Dec, 2005),
URL = <http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0512148>.

Think about minimal costs for salaries and university office expenses
for twenty theoretical physicist professors with less fame then Stephen
Hawking and Leonard Susskind. And include such expenses for the famous
ones.

Salaries and such are generally paid by the universities. A grant may
occasionally pay salary for the summer, if the institutional salary is a
9 month one. This is not a credible attempt at backing up your claim of
"multiple millions of dollars of science funding", unless you were
actually talking about professor's salaries.


I made a conjecture that I think is reasonable, especially since a
large part of the salaries of professors in major universities come

from grants.

Conceivably this is true in physics, though I remain to be convinced. It
certainly isn't true in biology, and I don't see why granting agencies
would have different policies for different sciences.




I would respect the opinion of an occasional TO poster
named "Steve Carlip." He is a professor of physics at UC Davis, and he
posted a bibliography of research articles about hypothetical World
Ensemble generated by eternal inflation. If Carlip responds, I would
accept his estimate of research grant dollars that have been given for
the research of hypothetical World Ensembles.

You agree that it's all theoretical work, and thus the only expenses
would be salaries and perhaps a bit of computer time, right? Salaries
paid by funding agencies, in my experience, are generally limited to
postdocs, grad students, and the odd summer salary or sabbatical.




In the meantime, I know that dozen of physics research journal articles
have been published about hypothetical World Ensembles, and I
conjecture that hundreds of such articles have been published.

But was the work paid for by millions of dollars in grants?


I thought that since the professors wrote the grants, then all of the
funding was considered part of their research budget. So till I get
some reliable data on the funds given to such physics research, I will
only claim that it is the work of physicists with a rich journal
literature base. And several of the article acknowledge funding, but
yes, I do not know how it is divvied up. If I get the chance to ask an
insider in the field, I will use his or her estimate for the funding.
(I will not consider Tembleton grants given for the philosophical
considerations, which IIRC was a large sum of money.)

And I know that data generated from particle research is used, but ,
yes, I suppose that would not be a direct expense.




And I met several physicists and
even biologists that rely on a hypothetical unlimited World Ensemble to
help to explain natural history.

Can you name some, and what exactly they are proposing?

Most people working with World Ensemble hypotheses and hypotheses of
Anthropic Principles are trying to explain the initial conditions of
the universe, which presumably include the origin of biochemical
properites/laws. (I will not quote private dialogues I had with
biologists).

You must have a different definition of "natural history" than I do, and
perhaps some different notion of "biochemical properties", because that
made no sense to me. I have no idea what a "biochemical law" would be. I
am asking here specifically about the biologists. Whatever are they
talking about? No need to quote; just explain.

Some biologists that I have talked with feel that the emergence of
humans or other intelligent life was likely, according to natural
mechanics. For example, several would reject the view of Stephen Jay
Gould that the origin of humans was unlikely.

Careful. Gould is talking about humans specifically, not intelligent
life. That particular conclusion seems obvious, and is entirely separate

from the question of whether intelligent life is likely.

No. Gould did not limit his critique to what we no as wise humans. He
made speculations about other potential types of intelligent life, for
example, any type of intelligent life would require deft locomotion and
manual dexterity.

Where do these speculations occur?

The Wonderful Life book, but I do not currently have the book on hand
to cite a page number.

I beg to differ. I have just reread what I would consider the relevant
parts of Wonderful Life, and Gould is always talking about the specific
origin of Homo sapiens, never anything more general like "some
intelligent species". The closest he comes to anything like you say is
when he discusses the chance that various other hominids --
neanderthals, H. erectus -- might have produced human-level intelligent
species if H. sapiens had become extinct early on. He doesn't give any
probabilities, but he suggests it's certainly possible that none of them
ever would. If there's a general statement anywhere in the book that
intelligent life is either likely or unlikely, I can't find it.


And some biologists would
appeal to an Anthropic Principal with an unlimited number of universes
so they could justify that the emergence of humans was likely.

It seems to me that we have no way to compute the probability other than
to look at the number of times it has happened, which is a poor
estimate. In the case of intelligent life, it appears to have happened
once. So what's the probability? How do any of these biologists go about
computing that? Have any biologists published on this? Can you name any
of them? It seems like a very silly argument to me.


I am not sure if it has made refereed journal articles, but Gould and
Denton and Conway Morris have written about it in books. There may be
others, but I focus on these.

I don't recall either Gould or Conway Morris mentioning multiple
universes. But perhaps you could cite books and page numbers? I don't
have copies of Denton's books. But what does he say?

I am sorry, these authors made no references to World Ensembles. But I
am applying their ideas about whether intelligent life was inevitable
in the universe. Morris at least convinced me that it would be
inevitable with no time frame.

Could you cite the particular works in which Gould and Conway Morris
make their arguments? (By the way, his last name is Conway Morris, not
Morris.) And what did Denton have to say?

Well, we ended up jumping to my other article in another thread. Denton
(1998) is the only one that specifically referred to probability in
regards to the emergence of intelligent life. On the other hand, Morris

Conway Morris. It's like a hyphenated last name without the hyphen.

(2003) stated that the emergence of intelligent life was inevitable
while Gould (1989) implied that the origin of intelligent life was
highly unlikely but happened regardless. (I think that it was an
implication of his work even though he did not directly state it.)

And I disagree. All he talks about is H. sapiens, quite specifically.

Do you at least think that in this work he *implied* that the origin of
H. sapiens was unlikely?


. And
I translate the inevitability according to Morris as a probability
equal to one while I translate the implications of the highly unlikely
according to Gould as a probability nearly equal to zero.

Whatever that means.

Here is a quote from Denton (1998), page 388.
"Then there is the difficulty of knowing how stringent the
evolutionary constraints may be in moving from a [prokaryotic] cell to
Homo sapiens. Perhaps the cosmos abounds in trees of life, but perhaps
only one in a million trees grows at all like our own on Earth to reach
the higher primates and eventually a species like Homo sapiens. Perhaps
only in a cosmos of the size and age of our own is there a probability
of one that Homo sapiens will arise. Science cannot yet say."

I think the last sentence is the important one.

The primary hypthesis in Denton (1998) was that inbuilt teleology made
a likely emergence of intelligent life.

M. Denton, Nature's Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose
in the Universe, (New York: Free Press, 1998), 388.

S.J. Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of
History, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989), Chapter V.

S.C. Morris, Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Again, that's "S. Conway Morris".

I finally got this one:)

James Goetz

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Classical Probability, Shakespearean Sonnets, and Multiverse
    ... Our Universe Natural," High Energy Physics - Theory, ... humans or other intelligent life was likely, ... Gould that the origin of humans was unlikely. ... Denton and Conway Morris have written about it in books. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Classical Probability, Shakespearean Sonnets, and Multiverse
    ... I cited some of these articles in my article, ... Our Universe Natural," High Energy Physics - Theory, ... humans or other intelligent life was likely, ... Gould that the origin of humans was unlikely. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Classical Probability, Shakespearean Sonnets, and Multiverse
    ... Our Universe Natural," High Energy Physics - Theory, ... humans or other intelligent life was likely, ... Gould that the origin of humans was unlikely. ... Denton and Conway Morris have written about it in books. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Classical Probability, Shakespearean Sonnets, and Multiverse
    ... I cited some of these articles in my article, ... Our Universe Natural," High Energy Physics - Theory, ... humans or other intelligent life was likely, ... Gould that the origin of humans was unlikely. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • An ID proposal (of sorts)
    ... Baring that, let them provoke laughter. ... histories of the universe, would be like the surfaces of the bubbles. ... needs to complete the consistency circuit from the beginning to the ... intelligent life is helpful in completing the consistency circuit ...
    (talk.origins)