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Author Topic:   the old improbable probability problem
Rahvin
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Message 49 of 76 (661889)
05-10-2012 7:26 PM
Reply to: Message 48 by zaius137
05-10-2012 7:11 PM


Re: redirected post
random assembly, we restrict attention to the RNA-world. Then referring to eq. (11) in Part I, we see that, for a cell consisting of Np proteins, each of which is a polypeptide containing Na amino acids (aa), the probability of random assembly is 1 in 10b where
b = (Np +2) [ m log(Np) . qmax + qra ]
No actual proponent of abiogenesis suggests that cells randomly self-assembled.
You're thinking of spontaneous generation, the sudden and spontaneous generation of fully-formed modern-appearing life (like cells) from non-life. That hypothesis was disproven by Louis Pasteur, and bears no resemblance to modern abiogenesis thinking.
The current set of hypotheses focuses on demonstrating the availability for plausible building-blocks for pre-life self-replicating molecules - in other words, the "first step" is not "cellular life." The first step is far more likely to look like a prion (a self-replicating protein; just a protein, only one, not a cell) or an RNA-based form of proto-life (like viruses, which bear some but not all of the characteristics of life and are not cells).

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of
variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the
outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." Barash, David 1995.

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