What is the Threshold of Intolerable Miraculousness?

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danshawen said:
I was the one who originally "leaked" that "wedge strategy" document. It went viral from where I originally posted it on the American Mensa discussion forum. Someone else lifted it from there and the rest is history. So, in a way, I suppose I am responsible for whatever happened to Eugene in terms of his lack of science education. I'm very sorry about that, Eugene
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That's funny, there is no documentation of that. All the discussions about leaking the wedge document make no mention of a dan shawen.
By the way, I invented uranium.
 
origin said:
That's funny, there is no documentation of that. All the discussions about leaking the wedge document make no mention of a dan shawen.
By the way, I invented uranium.
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If the Wiki account is correct, Dan is someone called Matt Duss.
 
Eugene Shubert said:
So if a self-replicating molecular machine A produces a mutated self-replicating molecular machine B such that, in its self-replicating process, two base pairs of B’s DNA gets transposed, then you regard it as a mathematical impossibility for the same two base pairs of B to get transposed again, in the next iteration of self-replication, which would be an evolution back to the original molecular machine A.
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One base pair? Sure.
The whole organism? No.
 
exchemist said:
Chapter 9 is the one about entropy and Maxwell's Demon. The punchline to this is that Maud knows the drink "spontaneously" separating into boiling and freezing parts only does so as a result of Maxwell's Demon swatting individual molecules with a special tennis racquet. By doing this, he redirects fast-moving molecules one way and slow-moving ones another.
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You misunderstood the point of the illustration completely.

Here is the punchline:

‘Think of it!' went on the professor in an awed, trembling voice. ‘Here I was telling you about statistical fluctuations in the law of entropy when we actually see one! By some incredible chance, possibly for the first time since the earth began, the faster molecules have all grouped themselves accidentally on one part of the surface of the water and the water has begun to boil by itself!

In the billions of years to come, we will still, probably, be the only people who ever had the chance to observe this extraordinary phenomenon.'

Unquestionably, it never even dawned on the professor that a mischievous being might be responsible for violating your grotesquely false notion of an improbability threshold.
 
exchemist said:
Eugene is from older stock: he is a biblical literalist, which means a Young Earth type creationist.
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No. I am a quantum creationist. Quantum creationism is any happenstance or intentional creation event where a highly ordered physical reality spontaneously materializes out of nothingness.

For example, Prof. Alexander Vilenkin, Director, Institute of Cosmology at Tufts University, is a quantum creationist.

 
To form any particular living thing, yes, the chances are infinitesimal that nature would form it exactly again. However, evolution doesn't have a particular form as a goal, nature can result in unique life forms all day long. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of probability.
 
In other words, the chances that you win the lottery are very small, but the chances that the lottery officials will draw a number are very high.
 
exchemist said:
What I cannot abide in these Seventh Day Adventists and other biblical literalists is that it requires a huge effort of will to remain ignorant, simply to try to achieve the manifestly impossible - and therefore foolish - objective of taking every word in the bible literally.
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That is one of the most ignorant accusations that I have ever heard. Seventh-day Adventists and Seventh-day Millerites share many common beliefs, such as understanding many examples of the Bible's use of symbolism, metaphors and poetic representations.
 
Eugene Shubert said:
Quantum creationism is any happenstance or intentional creation event where a highly ordered physical reality spontaneously materializes out of nothingness.
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If anything I can think of would break a "threshold of miraculousness" limitation, quantum creationism as you descibe it would definitely fill the bill.

Well, I suppose that if G-d can't be the center of everything, the least thing he can do is be spontaneous. I don't understand why this concept is a more comforting an idea, than if G-d took a more leisurely "I can wait" approach to creation, which is the case with evolution.

I do understand that religious values including a better understanding of how G-d created the universe can be a strong motivation for seeking a deeper understanding of scientific principles, Eugene. As long as you observe the first commandment, avoid the sin of pride wherever you can, and not make all or part of science or anything else into a graven image or an idol, it's tolerable.

In my adopted religious tradition, different parts of scripture are valued more than in yours. The book of revelations is not one of the five books of Moses, and so it is of no consequence whatsoever. The book of Genesis is there, but we do not take it literally, or anything akin to science.
 
parmalee said:
Why is this thread still in "Physics and Math"?
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This topic is entirely mathematical and physical. Even the definition of the threshold of intolerable miraculousness is mathematical. For what number N is an event of probability 1/N not unusual but an event of probability of 1/(N+1) is irritatingly improbable and undeniably impossible for all practical purposes? Also, this topic is related to my strictly math-based definition of an inheritable, maximal-magical molecule. I think it's amusing how hilarious religiously devout atheists become when you define a molecule -- using only pure mathematics -- to be inheritable and maximal-magical if it always had and would continue having a charmed life, which, I as I have claimed, can be defined purely mathematically.
 
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