(no subject)
Call me a Slate junkie (no really, go ahead, do it) but I loved reading this debate over ID on their forums. The biggest point that I can perceive with my tiny brain (and I certainly hope that anyone with a better knowledge of the science and math involved will straighten me out if I'm wrong) is how both debaters use possibility and probability as evidence. Being a bit of an SF geek when I was younger, I did and still do assume that in an infinite (or if not infinite, then at least almost inconceivably vast) universe over an infinite length of time possibilities become probabilities, to the point where anything possible is guaranteed to happen. (Call this the 'infinite number of monkeys' argument, if you will.) In combinatorics, you can't value any one outcome over any other- flipping a coin and getting tails ten times in a row has the exact same statistical likelihood as flipping a coin and getting tails, tails, tails, heads heads, tails heads tails tails heads, or any other conceivable combination, and it's only because we as humans allot more value to the former outcome that getting it would be miraculous, while getting the latter would be routine or disappointing.
I don't really know where I'm going with this, except that I don't believe that the universe cares what it turns out. It just keeps on flipping coins, if you will, and it doesn't care if it gets straight tails a million times over; but it must, by its nature, keep flipping. We conceive of ourselves as an end result, a finished and superior product, but we're just one of those strings of coincidences made concrete. Suns are another; specks of dust, vast empty reaches of space, galaxies and water molecules and constellations are others. We interpret it all to have meaning because that's how our brains operate, but that doesn't mean the universe did it all with a preexisting meaning in mind. The point is that the universe keeps flipping the quarter forever, which means that it must eventually flip every statistically possible combination. The fact that somewhere in there is the tails^n that created us is just part of the wonder of it all, as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, I don't know shit. Straighten me out if you do.
I don't really know where I'm going with this, except that I don't believe that the universe cares what it turns out. It just keeps on flipping coins, if you will, and it doesn't care if it gets straight tails a million times over; but it must, by its nature, keep flipping. We conceive of ourselves as an end result, a finished and superior product, but we're just one of those strings of coincidences made concrete. Suns are another; specks of dust, vast empty reaches of space, galaxies and water molecules and constellations are others. We interpret it all to have meaning because that's how our brains operate, but that doesn't mean the universe did it all with a preexisting meaning in mind. The point is that the universe keeps flipping the quarter forever, which means that it must eventually flip every statistically possible combination. The fact that somewhere in there is the tails^n that created us is just part of the wonder of it all, as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, I don't know shit. Straighten me out if you do.