It's not clear what the probability is over the ~hundreds of millions of years that it took on Earth. Could be that, under the conditions and on that timescale, we're an average or statistically unremarkable case.
Time may correlate with increase in entropy in general. But also consider assembly theory. Once certain assemblies dominate an environment, they constrain future possibilities. Environments and the life it supports evolve together.
A common belief, but manifestly false. Probabilities tend to combine exponentially, and that defeats our polynomial universe.
Or, to put it another way, it does not matter how many times you try to roll a million fair dice and get them to all come up six. It doesn't matter if the entire observable universe does nothing but that for the entire time from the start of the universe to the heat death end. It will still never happen.
Probabilities can easily be "larger" than our entire universe considered across both space and time. It isn't even a particularly remarkable thing to encounter such a probability.
Surely you realize that the universe could well be infinite -- and, to all appearances, is in any case not bounded in time. As such, every low probability thing will "at some point" occur. Thus the repugnant conclusion: Boltzmann Brains. But also Boltzmann planets, Boltzmann galaxies, and whatever else can occur will occur.
>you try to roll a million fair dice and get them to all come up six.
That is not a low probability event; that is an impossibility.
I think the problem here is that you think I am a digital electronic computer. I am not.
I am a human being.
I do not now, have never, and will never care about the technically possible I only care about the actually possible.
As a human, I know that six to the power of one million is impossible. Not to mention that rolling one million dice is absurd.
But as a human I also know that the chemical reaction needed to spark life isn't a six to the power of one million proposition.
I don't know what it is but it ain't that because it's been done, at least once.
edit: It's not absurd, rolling one million dice.
The heaviest verifiable weight ever lifted by a human being is 2422.18kg.
A 4mm die is 0.4g. Conceivably a contraption could be built by which a human could "roll" several million dice using the strength of their entire body.
The probability of life and all the steps that lead to it is obviously not more infinitesimal than all potential actions of all the molecules in the universe over time. It happened on Earth and it "only" took 150-650 million years after water formed on the planet. We just don't know how much more likely it is than "so rare we are lucky to be the only ones."
It's not clear what the probability is over the ~hundreds of millions of years that it took on Earth. Could be that, under the conditions and on that timescale, we're an average or statistically unremarkable case.
Time means more entropy, so I would think that makes the calculation much more problematic, no?
Time may correlate with increase in entropy in general. But also consider assembly theory. Once certain assemblies dominate an environment, they constrain future possibilities. Environments and the life it supports evolve together.
Low probabilities become certainties with billions of tests per year over hundreds of millions of years.
A common belief, but manifestly false. Probabilities tend to combine exponentially, and that defeats our polynomial universe.
Or, to put it another way, it does not matter how many times you try to roll a million fair dice and get them to all come up six. It doesn't matter if the entire observable universe does nothing but that for the entire time from the start of the universe to the heat death end. It will still never happen.
Probabilities can easily be "larger" than our entire universe considered across both space and time. It isn't even a particularly remarkable thing to encounter such a probability.
> polynomial universe
That's the mistake, right there.
Surely you realize that the universe could well be infinite -- and, to all appearances, is in any case not bounded in time. As such, every low probability thing will "at some point" occur. Thus the repugnant conclusion: Boltzmann Brains. But also Boltzmann planets, Boltzmann galaxies, and whatever else can occur will occur.
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>you try to roll a million fair dice and get them to all come up six.
That is not a low probability event; that is an impossibility.
I think the problem here is that you think I am a digital electronic computer. I am not.
I am a human being.
I do not now, have never, and will never care about the technically possible I only care about the actually possible.
As a human, I know that six to the power of one million is impossible. Not to mention that rolling one million dice is absurd.
But as a human I also know that the chemical reaction needed to spark life isn't a six to the power of one million proposition.
I don't know what it is but it ain't that because it's been done, at least once.
edit: It's not absurd, rolling one million dice.
The heaviest verifiable weight ever lifted by a human being is 2422.18kg.
A 4mm die is 0.4g. Conceivably a contraption could be built by which a human could "roll" several million dice using the strength of their entire body.
Now I kinda want that to happen.
5 replies →
The probability of life and all the steps that lead to it is obviously not more infinitesimal than all potential actions of all the molecules in the universe over time. It happened on Earth and it "only" took 150-650 million years after water formed on the planet. We just don't know how much more likely it is than "so rare we are lucky to be the only ones."
For a gambler, yes, but for a biological system? Stuff falls apart, it's like any progress continually gets wiped.