Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!pprg.unm.edu!hc!lll-winken!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!dan-hankins
From: dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Making fires and making minds - the laws of physics prevail
Message-ID: <18021@cup.portal.com>
Date: 6 May 89 07:10:14 GMT
References: <3019@tank.uchicago.edu>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 85

In article <3019@tank.uchicago.edu> cs_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes:

>Now look around you. Your terminal, your desk, your hands, your clothes -
>almost everything that surrounds you is in an EXTREMELY low probability
>position. We're supposed to believe that life started in some protein/amino
>acid soup some billion or so years ago and then randomly grew to the point
>it exists today. The probabilities of such an accident occurring according
>to the known laws of physics is infinitesmally small.

     I don't think so.  In a universe this size, I would think that the
odds that something self-organizing and reproducing would get started are
pretty good. 

     If in fact the odds of something like that getting started are really
that small, then I must remind you that it only had to happen _once_.  Once
you have things that are self-organizing and reproducing in an environment
where work can be done (i.e. not yet at maximum entropy), then the odds
begin to work for you;  the principles of evolution take over.

     The many-worlds view of quantum physics, which makes precisely the
same predictions and is no less subject to Occam's Razor, makes life here
even more plausible.  With all possibilities realized in the form of
'splitting' universes, we happen to live in the one where the initial
accident did happen.

>Let me characterize the unknown force which impels the ever-increasing 
>organization of the biosystem as Mind.

     I have no need of that hypothesis.  I've seen Genetic Algorithms in
action.  They work, and all in accordance with the laws of probability.


>Has modern physics ever shown that no such force exists?

     Having made the hypothesis, the burden of proof is on you to show that
it does exist, not on others to show that it does not.  That's how
scientific method works.

     I could hypothesize that Pluto is inhabited by little green men who
live underground.  Am I correct until someone shows me that no such thing
exists?


>Have they ever even tried to explain it?

     Do you mean your hypothesis that a force of consciousness called Mind
causes the local reversal of entropy in the biosphere?  They're not
required to.

     If you mean the reversal of entropy itself, it is well explained by
probabilistic laws.


>Am I really supposed to believe that such a thing can really happen by
>random accident?

     Yes.


>If a force exists which is capable of establishing such an enormously 'low
>probability wave function' as the Earth's biosystem, in complete
>contradiction to the laws of physical probability as we currently
>comprehend them, why can't you accept the possibility that maybe, just
>maybe, this same force really is capable of choice, which YOU have
>characterized as the ability to consistantly move matter into low
>probability locations?

     Because the probability function of the Earth's biosystem is not as
low-probability as you think.

     Flip a hundred coins, numbered one to 100.  The probability of coming
up with the particular sequence you got is roughly 1 in
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.  Yet there it is, staring you in
the face.  And you will find that if you do it enough times, certain
_kinds_ of sequences happen more often than others.  For instance,
sequences containing 50 heads and 50 tails will show up more often than any
other.

     Like I said before, only the initial self-organizing reproducing
organism needed to be formed by chance.  And in a Universe this size
existing for this amount of time, the odds that _one_ such gadget would
come about are not that bad.


Dan Hankins