mihkel4397: Fred Hoyle's calculation of probability of abiogenesis

The Before the Big Bang has drifted far off-topic, and ol' Nosy has closed it for a while. When he re-opens it I presume that discussion of Fred Hoyle's calculation of the probability of abiogenesis will be verboten. But I can't let mihkel4397 get away with his egregious misinterpretations and misrepresentations.Summarizing, in Message 74 mihkel4397 said: After I pointed out, with references, that Sir Fred was wrong, mihkel4397 asked: I responded with a more detailed critique. mihkel4397 responded: to which I responded: And now mihkel4397 responds: So, off I go.Point the first: Sir Fred Hoyle had no fundamental training in biology, and if you accept his assertions without proof, on what possible basis do you question other's abilities and training?Point the second: This is probably the most blatant shifting of goalposts I have ever seen. I wrote nothing of training and you didn't ask about that; you asked about authority, which is a very different kettle of fish.I have advanced training in the appropriate areas. I have been granted a Masters of Science and a Bachelors of Science degree, both from MIT. I have taken probability and statistics courses on both undergraduate and graduate levels. I have used advanced probability and statistics in 25 years of professional practice. I have taken biology courses on the undergraduate level, and kept up with the parts of the field that I find interesting (such as abiogenesis).So I am saying Hoyle was wrong (he did the calculations right, but his mathematical model was unrealistic and worthless) based on my personal and relevant expertise and ability in the field, and on the appropriate expertise of others embodied in the references, especially Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations.But when you come right down to it, degrees don't matter; years of experience don't matter; subjects studied don't matter (although they all can be useful indicators). What matters is the evidence and is the math correct and is the math based on a realistic model of the real world. Hoyle's math was not based on a realistic model of the real world, no matter how much expertise and how many qualifications he had.As a side note, I think that anyone who's absorbed a week's worth of probability and statistics could tell that Hoyle was wrong by just thinking about it. One of his errors, as I noted in Message 90, was that Hoyle assumed the the life we see is the only kind of life that could possibly evolve; he should have calculated the odds of any kind of life appearing. One of the first things we learn in probability and statistics is the basic definition of probability; the number of different ways an event can happen divided by the number of relevant events that can happen. Hoyle can be proved wrong on the basis of that definition alone!How many different ways can life arise? We don't know.How many relevant events can happen? We don't know.Can we divide one number that we don't know by another number that we don't know and get a meaningful answer? No.Therefore, Hoyle was wrong.So, mihkel4397, the ball's in your court now; we've pointed out why Sir Fred was wrong and why you've misinterpreted/misrepresented Crick. Time for you to discuss our arguments rather than committing more appeal-to-authority and ad-hominem fallacies.

In Message 118 mihkel4397 wrote: Do you mean Crick? He didn't agree that abiogenesis was low probability. "But this should not be taken to imply that there are good reasons to believe that it could not have started on the earth by a perfectly reasonable sequence of fairly ordinary chemical reactions.".This is your first mention of Wald. If you mean Dr. George Wald, he doesn't agree either. There is an egregious, actually fabricated, misquote atributed to him that seems to indicate that he agrees, but he doesn't. See Quote #57. Incidentally, the "spontaneous generation" referred to there means the arising of modern forms of life from dead but possible organic matter and was indeed disproven by Pasteur long ago, but has nothing to do with modern theories of abiogenesis; see Spontaneous Generation and the Origin of Life.This is also your first mention of Barghorn; I think you mean Elso Sterrenberg Barghoorn. He published some papers in the 1960's and 70's reporting very early microfossils, shortening the time between the cooling of the Earth's surface and the appearance of life. But you're going to have to come up with some evidence that he agreed with Hoyle.Hoyle obviously agreed with himself; but he was always a bit of a nut. Brilliant, but a nut. He didn't know much biology, and he made some elementary mistakes.

Nitpick: Iron is made in ordinary stars like the Sun, although most of it is made in larger stars. It's heavier elements that require supernovae. Creation of the Heavier Elements:

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After the bulk of a star’s hydrogen has been converted to helium by either the proton-proton or carbon-nitrogen-oxygen process, the stellar core contracts (while the outer layers expand) until sufficiently high temperatures are reached to initiate “helium-burning” by the triple-alpha process; in this process, three helium nuclei (alpha particles) are fused to make a carbon nucleus. By successive additions of helium nuclei, the heavier elements through iron-56 are built up. The elements whose atomic weights are not multiples of four are created by side reactions that involve neutrons. Because iron-56 is the most stable of the elements, it is very difficult to add an extra helium nucleus to it. However, iron-56 will readily capture a neutron to form the less stable isotope, iron-57. From iron-57, the elements through bismuth-209 can be synthesized. The elements more massive than bismuth-209 are radioactive; that is, they spontaneously break apart. However, during a supernova, an extremely intense flux of neutrons is generated and nuclear reactions proceed so rapidly that the radioactive elements do not have enough time to decay, resulting in the rapid creation of the radioactive elements up to and beyond uranium.

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