Quote from: RE on Aug 23, 2026, 09:41 AMThat was a long way of saying you believe the Universe and Life is Random, but it clearly isn't.

Oh please. While I can count on a vast majority of people knowing nothing about statistics (and even fewer their involvement in the geosciencese), I did not imply random in my siloloqui to have it characterized so simply.

Life is NOT random, it just requires the right combination of circumstances/timing/ingredients, all the basic molecular components of which float around in space until...they no longer float around...and instead form...stuff....and said stuff sometimes becomes life. Or not. Might look random, or sound random, but you should know better. All these independent distributions of stuff...combining in weird ways, life of our type being one outcome, life of another type undoubtedly exists...elsewhere..and at other times. When a systeem as large as our Universe delivers life ONCE, there is no longer random, there is absolute certainty of a given outcome, the only question being the liklihood of occurrence across the unfathomable number of combinations of dead galaxies and current galaxies and galaxies yet to come. In that system, we are proof of certainty, and in that certainty, guarentee its existence. The only question is what are the odds of occurrence. Nothing more random that the odds on a rooullette table, which on any given table are immutable and known.

Human exitence isn't required for this math to work, the prokaryotes 3.7 billion years ago were sufficient. The only question left is the liklihood of occurrence per unit of whatever. Random....please....there is a distribution describing the occurrence EXACTLY...we just lack the information to know it yet.

Quote from: REAnyhow, DNA's structure and how it works is something that was inside the box we didn't know before 1953, now we do.  There's a whole lot more inside the box we still have little clue on, but in a million more years we might have had a shot.  How the brain works to organize thoughts and emotions is pretty much a mystery, besides identifying a few areas in the organ responsible for various tasks.  Better understanding that might have given a clue as to the purpose of the  organization necessary to build it.  Not gonna happen though
RE

The hubris of us bipeds. We know DNA. We be smartz. The amount we DON'T know yet is likely orders of magnitude beyond what we DO know yet. The Wright Brothers did cooler stuff, but DNA will probably be more useful in the long run. So what? Think it will cure our urge to over-exploit everything we touch? Will it stop people from suffering "us versus them" attitudes? Politicians from deciding the "good" citizens from the "bad" ones based on skin color and nationality?

Based on your understanding of DNA, do you think it has potential to cure humans from doing stupid things before collapse finally shows up and reduces our population enough to qualify as one?

Quote from: TDoS on Aug 23, 2026, 12:45 PMBased on your understanding of DNA, do you think it has potential to cure humans from doing stupid things before collapse finally shows up and reduces our population enough to qualify as one?

The only thing DNA does is encode for the various proteins your meat package is composed of and uses in the chemical reactions that drive your metabolic system.  That isn't enough information to understand why humans do stupid things.  We'll need another million years to figure that out, so no, not before collapse finishes.

You repeated my point, which was that what's in the Black Box is far greater than what we have figured out.  DNA, as neat as it is in it's operation doesn't do a damn thing to explain the workings of the human mind.  I don't think that's an impenetrable problem though, given enough time and people as smart as me working on it. lol.

Even if all the planets in the universe that could support life had 8 Billion monkeys typing from the Big Bang until now, one of them would not type out the complete works of Shakespeare at random.  That's an easier problem than randomly starting life.  Gotta have a plan.

RE

Quote from: RE on Aug 23, 2026, 01:24 PM

Quote from: TDoS on Aug 23, 2026, 12:45 PMBased on your understanding of DNA, do you think it has potential to cure humans from doing stupid things before collapse finally shows up and reduces our population enough to qualify as one?

The only thing DNA does is encode for the various proteins your meat package is composed of and uses in the chemical reactions that drive your metabolic system.  That isn't enough information to understand why humans do stupid things.  We'll need another million years to figure that out, so no, not before collapse finishes.

Oh, I think behavioral psychologists and whatnot might be all that's needed if they have done some study, hell folks like Jared Diamond can detail humans in the past doing both stupid things and being subject to the consequences of climate change, local resource depletion, famine, plague, all the usual normal stuff.

HISTORIANS in general might be enough, the psychologists for putting the pieces together to figure out the how/when/why.

Quote from: REDNA, as neat as it is in it's operation doesn't do a damn thing to explain the workings of the human mind.

Hence my commentary above.

Quote from: REEven if all the planets in the universe that could support life had 8 Billion monkeys typing from the Big Bang until now, one of them would not type out the complete works of Shakespeare at random.

Of course they could...it just wouldn't be Shakespeare but its alien equivalent. Stop being so species centric, expand your horizons, take a crack at interesting cosmological questions involving not just what life is from a human view but alien life unlike anything human. Alien prokaryotes as it were, except as primitive as humans of now, and they advanced far beyond us, and then died when their star expired. Some are new now, some already became advanced and became extinct, some are as primitive as us, others are like....dinosaurs...except with brains and fingers and stuff. Who knows?

Quote from: REThat's an easier problem than randomly starting life.  Gotta have a plan.
RE

God does. If you swing that way. God doesn't place dice with the Universe. Doesn't need to.

Not Aliens dimwit, Monkeys.  Or Raccoons.  Or any other creature that could randomly peck at a keyboard with no plan.  If you can't even grasp the analogy, it's pointless to further debate this.

RE

Quote from: TDoS on Aug 23, 2026, 12:45 PMThe hubris of us bipeds. We know DNA. We be smartz. The amount we DON'T know yet is likely orders of magnitude beyond what we DO know yet. The Wright Brothers did cooler stuff, but DNA will probably be more useful in the long run. So what? Think it will cure our urge to over-exploit everything we touch? Will it stop people from suffering "us versus them" attitudes? Politicians from deciding the "good" citizens from the "bad" ones based on skin color and nationality?

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

True that.